“The hardest part is knowing what their families have gone through. Exoneration is our country coming together in a sense, amending and correcting past wrongs.”
— Yulie Padmore, executive director of the Port Chicago Alliance, on Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro’s announcement last week exonerating 258 Black servicemen who were court-martialed, jailed and threatened for refusing to return to work loading munitions after a deadly 1944 explosion at Port Chicago on Suisun Bay.