The graduation photograph of Dental Technician School Class A-6905 is dated 15 July 1969. Standing in the second row at the extreme right corner, behind some rather heavy-set young women who are seated on the ground, is Seaman Mark Essex, wearing an immaculate white uniform. His lips are parted in a half smile.
Seven months earlier, on January 13, Essex had enlisted in the Navy in his hometown of Emporia, Kansas, after spending one restless semester at Kansas State College in nearby Pittsburgh. An indifferent student, he received mediocre, if passing, grades, a pattern identical to one set at Emporia Senior High School where Essex, who played saxophone in the band, had excelled only in music and physical education. He also received better than average grades in automotive mechanics, having studied the latter for two years at the city’s vocational school and working weekends at Johnson’s Garage, whose proprietor was the only black in Emporia to own his own business. Knowing that he was likely to be drafted and very possibly wind up in Vietnam, Essex decided to take the Navy entrance exam in which he scored in the top 25 percent on the technically oriented tests. Impressed with the Navy’s training program, he signed up for a four-year hitch at advanced pay because of his college background. When he found out where he was being sent, he was elated.
San Diego, as Essex learned, is tucked in the southwestern tip of California, hard by the Pacific Ocean. A Navy town to the core — some sixty thousand of its half-million residents are naval personnel or dependents — the Eleventh U.S. Naval District is headquartered on the city’s magnificent bay, a landlocked crescent of blue water discovered by the Spanish in 1542. The bay, sheltered from the ocean by a protective rim of hills, is anchorage for countless carriers, destroyers, sub marines, supply ships, and fishing smacks.
The Navy recruiting office in Emporia provided other information. Essex learned that the Naval Training Center — where he was destined to spend three months — processed more than sixty-nine thousand recruits a year; and that boot camp would last ten weeks, focusing on fundamentals of seamanship, ordnance, gunnery, fire fighting, and physical training. The center, he was told, was virtually a self-contained city with mess halls, innumerable classrooms, drill fields, and recreation areas. It also housed the Naval Electronics Laboratory, Radio Station, and Sonar School. As a result of his preparation, when Essex arrived in San Diego in early February, he already had a good idea of what to expect.
By April, Essex had finished boot camp with an outstanding performance rating and was encouraged to take advanced training in a specialty. On the advice of his instructors, he decided to enroll in the Naval Dental Center. Essex finished the Class “A” school after the prescribed three-month course, taking classes in X-ray procedures, oral surgery, endodontics (root-canal work), periodontics (tooth decay), and prosthetics (tooth replacement). Again he was rated outstanding and in July was assigned to the Dental Clinic at the Naval Air Station at Imperial Beach. It was primarily a helicopter base.
Essex quickly developed an excellent working relationship with Lieutenant Robert Hatcher, a young dentist who was impressed with his dedication and attitude.
“When Mark checked aboard, I signed him up for the flag football team I coached,” Hatcher said. “He was a pretty good athlete, small and a little thin, but he was very fast and had good moves. He was a flanker or split-end and scored several touchdowns. He was a good team man, sort of an all-American boy. In those days he was just the nicest person in the world. He was concerned about everybody around him, concerned about learning his job. I had one assistant who was better, but the kid had much more experience than Mark. He was the kind of person I liked to have around, a happy-go-lucky kid who was very hard to get rattled. I’m very demanding, especially when it concerns dentistry. I demanded a lot out of him and he delivered. His folks flew out to visit him early in his tour. They were just fine people. I really liked them. They were nice, warm, down-home people who really enjoyed living and loved their son.
“Mark and I were about as close as an enlisted man and an officer could be. Very frankly, we really threw a lot of b.s. out the window . . . I felt we worked best working as a team and that’s the way we produced our dentistry. Again, Mark was very, very eager to learn. I taught him a lot of things that I don’t think most dental techs would have been interested in. He really wanted to know what it was all about. He may have had inklings at one time of going back to school and maybe even being a dentist.”
Another description of Essex was offered by co-worker Paul Valdez: “He was an easygoing guy. He would sing to himself and be real friendly with everyone. I remember when I first got to the clinic he took time out and helped me. He showed me how to work with the doctors. He used to get along with the doctors real well.”
Little by little, though, Essex began to be bothered by something he had never encountered before — racial harassment. Writing home to his parents, he complained that the Navy “is not like I thought it would be, not like in Emporia. Blacks have trouble getting along here.” Essex talked about the problem with several black friends, who told him “that’s just the way it is” in the Navy. They suggested that the best way to avoid prejudice was to ignore it and work hard to get promoted. It was easier to get along, they told him, “if you have some rank.”
During those early months, Essex also had several brief talks with Dr. Hatcher about discrimination on the base and received the same advice — take advantage of educational opportunities and work for promotions. Following it, Essex climbed in rank from seaman recruit to seaman in less than a year. The annoyances continued, however, and gradually he began to be discouraged. It was increasingly clear that blacks were second-class citizens in the Navy, and it was hard for him to understand why no one seemed willing to change things.
It was during that first year at Imperial Beach that Essex began to read about the black movement, something he had rarely done in Emporia. With interest he followed in the newspapers the legal battles of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who had founded the Black Panther Party in 1967. Newton thunder was in jail charged with manslaughter in the shooting of an Oakland policeman, and Seale was a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial, accused of trying to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Essex also read a wire-service story, dated December 4, 1969, detailing how Fred Hampton, the twenty-two-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, had been shot dead during an early morning raid at his apartment.
There were other stories closer to home. In that same month of December, a five-hour gun battle erupted in Los Angeles between police and eleven Panthers, including three women. And the following May, three blacks — the so-called Soledad Brothers — went on trial in San Diego for the murder of a guard at the Soledad State prison, two hundred miles to the north. It also was during this time that Essex fell under the persuasive influence of some new friends.
Five months younger than Essex, Rodney Frank had joined the Navy on December 15, 1969, and was sent to San Diego for boot camp. Frank, who was from New Orleans, had an extensive arrest record before he enlisted. In February 1969, he was arrested on two counts of armed robbery and one count of attempted theft; then in October, barely two months before he signed up, Frank was arrested again, this time on charges of simple rape and theft. Twice in 1967 he was arrested for vagrancy. In each instance the Orleans Parish District Attorney refused to prosecute, citing lack of evidence. Although he listed his occupation as “laborer,” Frank, for the most part, was unemployed. Tight-lipped with strangers and suspicious, Frank made few friends during boot camp but apparently was not involved then in any of the clashes with commanding officers that eventually would lead to his court-martial and early dismissal from the service.
In May 1970, Frank and his wife arrived at the Naval Air Station at Imperial Beach. Rated an airman, he was assigned to the Airframes Division of the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department. Shortly afterward, he met Essex and soon the men were meeting off base. Of their acquaintance the official police report states: “Fellow sailors and superior officers reported that Essex began to have a change of attitude as he became more closely associated with Rodney Frank. Frank, who was described as being militant and antagonistic, later became a Black Muslim, and his attitude toward the white population may have influenced Mark Essex’s thinking.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation later determined that Essex, while in the Navy, also “associated with and received black militant literature from a member of the Black Panther Party.” There’s further evidence that he mingled off-base with other tough-talking blacks in the San Diego area. These individuals (who are not named in police or military documents) undoubtedly felt their relationship with Essex was one of student-teacher: the naive black from backwoods America needed to be informed what it was like to be beaten down by the system. What influence they had on Essex is not known; whatever it was, it became increasingly clear to Dr. Hatcher and others that the young sailor had changed.