The USS Hornet Museum will be celebrating the beginning of Black History with a kickoff event Saturday, Feb. 4. The full-day event will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Presentations begin at 1 PM.

Retired United States Air Force Col. Conway Jones will give the keynote presentation at the event. Also, at the event, the National Park Service will be here to give a presentation about the Port Chicago Disaster, Katie Garchar of East Bay Parks will give a presentation about Thurgood Marshall and Social Justice, and the new African Americans in the Military exhibit, created by the Walking Ghosts of Black History in partnership with the National Park Service and the USS Hornet Museum, will be open to visit.

Jones retired from the United States Air Force Reserve as a colonel in 1993 with 30 years of combined active and reserve duty. He is credited with 87 airlift missions in Vietnam. Jones is the founding chairman of the Western Aerospace Museum, Oakland, California (renamed Oakland Aviation Museum). Jones, also an arts patron, is the founder and chairman of the Calvin Simmons Center for the Performing Arts and other arts programs.

The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions explosion of the ship SS E. A. Bryan that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, a former town in Contra Costa County south of Suisun Bay. The explosion killed 320 sailors and civilians and injured 390 others, many of whom were enlisted African American sailors. The explosion also damaged hundreds of buildings in the town.

In the aftermath, hundreds of servicemen refused to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty men‍ —‌ called the "Port Chicago 50"‍ —‌ were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor, as well as a dishonorable discharge.

To learn more about USS Hornet Museum’s Black History Month Kickoff Event, visit https://uss-hornet.org.