“Ours must be a Navy family that recognizes no artificial
barriers of race, color or religion. There is no Black Navy
— no White Navy — just one Navy, the U.S. Navy.”
ELMO ZUMWALT,
Chief of Naval Operations
February, 19712
One of the first persons Mark Essex saw when he returned to Imperial Beach was Dr. Hatcher. It was a clear, shimmering fall day with a high blue sky and a stiff breeze blowing in off the ocean. The meeting occurred at the dental clinic. Speaking softly, Essex explained why he had gone to Emporia.
“I just couldn’t hack it anymore, and I felt like everybody was out to get me,” he said. “I really had to go home to get my head straight, and my mom and dad told me that I had to do it this way. So here I am. You do whatever you have to do and then, that’s it. I’m getting out.”
“It would be a lot easier if you tried to stick it out, Mark,” Hatcher said. “I know it will be hard, but you can fight what’s been going on. If you run now, it will be just that much easier to run again tomorrow or the next day. It’ll never stop.”
Essex was silent. Then: “Nothing is going to change, doctor. The same old hassles will go on, and me and all the other blacks will keep on coming out on the bottom. I don’t want to have anything more to do with the Navy. It wouldn’t be fair, not to you or to the patients. The bad atmosphere would affect my work, and I don’t want that to happen. The work is the only thing on this base I like.”
“But what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to figure all that out, I guess. Right now, I just don’t know.”
The two men talked for a while longer and when they finished, Essex reported to the military police.
The court-martial was held two months later, on January 15. It was practically a formality because Essex readily pleaded guilty to the charge.
Essex’s lawyer, a young lieutenant named Reid Ervin, based his defense on the prejudice issue and asked Dr. Hatcher to testify at the proceedings. Hatcher consented and at nine thirtyfive in the morning he took the stand. The room, except for a few tables and wooden chairs, was bare, dappled with sunlight that filtered through partially open venetian blinds. The military judge, Lieutenant James N. Rogers, told the dentist to take as much time as he needed.
Hatcher began by describing how long he had known Essex and their fine working relationship. He matter of factly discussed Essex’s repeated encounters with harassment and prejudice. He told the court how Essex and three of his friends were put on report for excessive noise in the barracks. The sailors requested a summary court martial, but Hatcher explained that never happened. Essex and the other men were convinced — even though the complaint against them was dropped — that there had been yet another whitewash.
“I think the reason why he went UA was a combination of all these things,” Hatcher said. “He was, I think genuinely concerned about what was happening, not in his own life but to his fellow blacks . . . the harassment at the living quarters and mess hall. I think that the total picture of the hopelessness of the situation was the thing that precipitated his UA. I think he needed, in his own mind, to get away from the military situation in order to think things out as to where he . . . fit into the picture. He expressed to me then that he was so agitated that he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work. . . . He still remains the most outstanding dental assistant we have in the department as far as his technical ability, his attention to duties, his willingness to work. If I had my choice, he would be the man that I would want working with me, and I don’t think that his problem here is in any way related to his work in the department. He is still respected by all hands, and he gets along with all hands real well.”
Court recessed and was called to order again at ten fortyfive. This time it was Essex’s turn to testify. When he began, his voice, normally high pitched, shook slightly.
“I am the accused, and I am stationed at NAS, Imperial Beach, California. I am authorized to wear the National Defense Ribbon only. I am from Emporia, Kansas. I have two brothers and two sisters and my mother and father in my family. The population of Emporia is about twenty-five thousand people. I have been at NAS, Imperial Beach since 18 March 1969. I believe that Dr. Hatcher explained most of everything as to the reason that I went UA. When we asked for a courtmartial, the four black people felt that it was a case of discrimination. . . . Then they dismissed the trial and they took us to XO’s screening, and the XO said that his kids made noise too, and so right there the XO compared us with his kids and the Captain said basically the same thing to us. The CO said that he believed that four black people could live in the same room together if the circumstances were right. I went because I just needed time to think. I had had a fight. I got a ticket to LA and while I was in the bus station, the driver of a bus going to New Orleans left his bus and I jumped on and got to El Paso and called my folks and they sent me the money to come home. I had to talk to some black people because I had begun to hate all white people. I was tired of going to white people and telling them my problems and not getting anything done about it. I am twenty-one years old. Almost every time I drove on the base they would search my car. I had a fight in front of the chow hall. Some friends of mine were going back to the barracks, and I was going to chow and they asked me to bring back some chicken for them, and I asked then what color the chicken was to be, and they said that it should be black. Well, someone said to me, ‘Why does it have to be black, what is wrong with white?’ and I jumped on his chest. I let any one of my friends use my car. We all had keys to it. Every time I came through the gate they would search it. I talked to one of the security guards about going to security and making a complaint and he told me that it wouldn’t do any good. If I have any more problems I believe I can go to Dr. Hatcher, and he would help me and I wouldn’t have to go UA. I like to work with him. I knew that if I asked for thirty days leave I couldn’t get it because I didn’t have any leave on the books. I have two years left and when I get out I want to become a dentist.”
Shortly after he finished the military judge announced sentence. Essex would “forfeit $90.00 pay per month for a period of two months;” be restricted “to the limits of the Naval Air Station . . . for a period of 30 days” and “be reduced to the pay grade of E-2.” Then, leaning forward in his chair, the judge said, “Airman Essex, I am further going to recommend to the convening authority that the reduction that I have just awarded you from E-3 to E-2 be suspended for a period of time that he deems appropriate. I feel that the prejudice issues that were raised by the defense, while not excusing your offense, do materially explain your actions. I feel, and strongly will recommend to the convening authority that the reduction be suspended for a period that he deems appropriate.”
The court-martial was over. Essex accepted the sentence in silence, his face hard set and expressionless, then he turned on his heels and walked out of the room, and in a matter of weeks, out of the Navy. On February 11, he was granted an early discharge. Later, in Washington, a Navy spokesman described it as a general discharge for unsuitability. On January 25, 1971, Essex signed a document wherein he acknowledged that he was being considered “for an administrative discharge for reason of unsuitability due to a character behavior disorder.” Three days later, the Naval Air Station’s commanding officer recommended that “Essex be separated from the naval service. . . . Further retention in the service would not be in the best interests of the Navy. Essex continues to display flagrant disregard for Military authority, despite frequent counseling at the departmental and command level. Essex’s impulsive behavior, and inability to accept the responsibilities of military service have rendered him a severe liability to this command.”
When he learned that his hitch had ended almost two years early, Essex was probably jubilant. It took him little time to pack and to say good-by to Frank and a few other black friends. Dr. Hatcher saw Essex before he left and told him that he would be pleased to offer a job recommendation if he ever needed it. He encouraged Essex to go back to school and continue his education. When they parted, they shook hands.
Clearly, Mark Essex was a casualty of history. He was a product of the Navy’s long, unsightly record of systematic discrimination, a record which had permitted over one hundred thousand blacks to enlist in World War One but then allowed them to work only as stewards or mess attendants, a story repeated in World War Two. With few exceptions, blacks usually waited on tables (the rare exceptions were segregated crews; the World War Two destroyer Mason and the subchaser PC1264 served with distinction, their crews almost entirely black), and it wasn’t until 1944 that the first black naval officers in U.S. history were commissioned, twelve in all.
By the time Essex enlisted, barely five per cent of all Navy personnel were black; black officers numbered five hundred, less than one-half of one per cent of an eighty-thousand man officer corps. Blacks, with good reason, felt that they were being denied equal treatment.
The explosion finally struck during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Black sailors, reflecting the militant mood of the black community, began to rebel. Fights swept U.S. military bases and naval stations. In Vietnam, black GIs drafted to fight in a war in which they didn’t believe, were accused of blowing up — fragging — white officers. Morale disintegrated. Resistance organized, and groups with names like “Black Liberation Front of the Armed Forces” were established. Sabotage increased. In May 1970, for example, nuts, bolts and chains were dumped down the main gear shaft of the U.S.S. Anderson while she was docked in San Diego. Other ships were similarly damaged. The revolt of Seaman Essex was the revolt of every black in uniform.
Lieutenant Commander William Norman, a young black on Admiral Zumwalt’s staff, observed the upheavals firsthand. By 1970 what he had seen and experienced had so frustrated and angered him that he had decided to leave the sea service. Zumwalt, who picked him as his Special Assistant for Minority Affairs, made him change his mind. “The Navy has had a reputation in the Black community of being discriminatory,” Norman told a journalist after his appointment. “This, in fact, goes back to the racial inequities in the Navy, starting around the Spanish-American War in 1898 and including World War Two. . . . Black Navy men, in general, dread a permanent thunder change of duty station. They know that whenever they go to a new community they are going to have to go through the indignities, their families as well, of finding a house in a community where they may not be welcome. . . . There is not a community in the continental United States where Black people still do not experience discrimination in trying to find housing for their families.
After consulting with Norman and other blacks, Zumwalt, by February 1971, had begun to issue a series of directives that have since come to be called Z-grams. The most famous, Zgram 66, states in part: “Every base, station and aircraft squadron commander and ship commanding officer shall appoint an aware minority officer or senior petty officer as his special assistant for minority affairs. . . .” (It is necessary) “ to open up new avenues of communications with not only our black personnel but also with all minority groups in the Navy so that we may learn what and where the areas of friction are. Second, all of us in the Navy must develop far greater sensitivity to the problems of all our minority groups so that we may more effectively go about solving them. . . . Much remains to be done.”3
But February of 1971, the month of his discharge, was far too late for Essex who, much earlier, had told a shipmate, “There is no place in this white man’s Navy for a self-respecting black man.”