Instead of being able to choose their own branch of the service like their white peers, the Black men were “limited to waiting on tables and making beds for the officers” on their ship as so-called mess attendants, they wrote.
In the previous six months, the letter said, nine Black sailors on mess attendant duty had received one of the Navy’s most arcane and brutal punishments: three days’ confinement with nothing to eat but bread and water. The reason was fighting and arguing with other enlisted men, which the punished sailors said was a result of the mistreatment they received.
“We sincerely hope to discourage any other colored boys who might have planned to join the Navy and make the same mistake we did,” the letter says. “All they would become is seagoing bellhops, chambermaids and dishwashers.”
“We take it upon ourselves to write this letter, regardless of any action the naval authorities may take or whatever the consequences may be. We only know that it could not possibly surpass the mental cruelty inflicted upon us on this ship.”
The consequences for the 15 Black sailors were indeed severe: “undesirable” discharges — a term for what the U.S. military now calls an “other than honorable” discharge — that forever cut the men off from veterans’ benefits and inked their paperwork with an indelible stigma that caused many future employers to steer clear.
The cruiser Philadelphia was decommissioned in 1951, and the brothers did their best to move on with their lives. Both raised families and had children who served in the military.
The brothers signed the 1940 letter as John William Ponder Jr. and James Edward Ponder, along with Ernest Bosley, Arval Perry Cooper, Shannon H. Goodwin, Theodore L. Hansbrough, Byron C. Johnson, Floyd C. Owens, James Porter, George Elbert Rice, Otto Robinson, Floyd C. St. Clair, Fred Louis Tucker, Robert Turner and Jesse Willard Watford, according to the Navy.
