sweet home Chicago

[Mike Salovesh]

Patrick Courts wrote:
>
> although this is not directly related to this listserv, some of you may
> either know the answer to my question or know where I might find it.  In
> the song Sweet Home Chicago is, Robert Johnson sings that he is "going back
> to California, to my sweet home Chicago." does anyone know how California
> fits in to the sense of the song?

Yes, there is a street named "California" in Chicago.  It's something
over twenty miles long, and for most of its length it's called
"California Avenue". (I believe I remember some parts that are called
"California Boulevard", but it's all one continuous thoroughfare.)  I
don't see any reason to think that's the California mentioned in Sweet
Home Chicago.

It's possible that the juxtaposition of "California" and "Chicago" in
Sweet Home Chicago may be an oblique reference to events that took place
during World War II.  (I don't know that this is true; it's merely the
first thing that came to mind when I saw the question from Patrick
Courts.)

There is (or, rather, was) a Chicago in California:  Port Chicago, on
San Francisco Bay.  It was built for the Navy as a site for loading
ammunition and explosives on cargo ships during World War II. The men
who did the actual loading were "Negro" enlisted men of the U.S. Navy;
their officers were all white.

(I use quotes around the word "Negro" because in the context of the time
it was the word used to describe people who today might be called
"black" or "African American". I'm trying to emphasize historicity with
this word; when I use the word "black", instead, I'll leave it unmarked.
"White", with or without quotes, is a label that hasn't changed since
long before WW II; I won't mark it here.)

In July, 1944, two munitions ships exploded at Port Chicago; the forces
of the blasts were equivalent to five kilotons of TNT.  (That's roughly
the size of the A-bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.)  About 15% of all
"Negro" casualties in the Navy during World War II happened in those
explosions. (202 of the 320 dead were black enlisted men; so were more
than half of the wounded survivors.)

The aftermath, not the explosion, made Port Chicago infamous to this
day. Port Chicago is synonymous with racial discrimination, near-slavery
conditions, and a disgraceful miscarriage of justice.

Less than a month after the disastrous explosions, black enlisted men
were ordered back to work loading munitions. Complaining that they had
never been trained to handle explosives, and that they were given no
safety equipment for use on the job, 258 black enlisted men refused to
return to work without appropriate training and equipment.  They were
arrested, sequestered on barges under inhumane conditions, and kept
there for three days.  208 of the men were tried at summary courts
martial, fined three months' pay for disobeying orders, and sentenced to
bad conduct discharges. 50 were tried by general courts martial under
charges associated with mutiny. They were found guilty, and sentenced to
between 8 and 15 years at hard labor, in a trial that was marked by
extremes of racial prejudice.  (That's not my opinion: it's the finding
of an official review of the trials -- fifty years later.)

White America pretty much forgot about the Port Chicago disaster,
"mutiny", and miscarriage of justice.  Black America did not.  That's
why I suggest the possibility that Port Chicago, California could be the
oblique reference in Sweet Home Chicago.

-- mike salovesh                    <salovesh at niu.edu>
PEACE !!!

P.S.:  Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles, convicted of mutiny at Port Chicago
in 1944, was pardoned by President Clinton in December, 1999. He may
have been the last survivor of the original 50.