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Simmering racial tensions inflamed by discriminatory punitive measures sparked a violent confrontation aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strikes off the coast of North Vietnam.
The US Navy charged Black sailors with rioting and assaults on White sailors in an incident referred to as a race riot, while totally ignoring violent unprovoked assaults committed by White sailors and Marines.
Author Marv Truhe was a Navy JAG defense lawyer seeking justice for the accused Black sailors. Truhe possesses one of the most complete collections, personal or institutional, of original source documents of the Kitty Hawk incident and its legal aftermath—trial transcripts, investigation reports, hundreds of sworn statements and medical reports, federal court pleadings, and case files and witness interviews.
How could virtually all official and unofficial accounts of the incident have placed blame for the incident solely on twenty-three Black sailors? How could they have been subjected to blatant racial injustices without their story being told until now?
It is time to reveal the uncomfortable answers to these questions and expose the injustices perpetrated against these twenty-three young men.
