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San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, December 16, 2004

LEAH GARCHIK

(Excerpt from column)

That premiere performance of Marcus Shelby's "Port Chicago Suite for Jazz Orchestra,'' inspired by the Port Chicago mutiny of 1944 and mentioned in an editorial last week, was at a benefit for the Equal Justice Society.

Eva Paterson, head of the society, says that the idea of a civil rights ballet grew out of her conversations with Shelby and Karen Brown, artistic director of the Oakland Ballet. The Port Chicago mutiny was the refusal of African American workers to load munitions in Port Chicago (now the Concord Naval Weapons Station) in unsafe conditions, after an explosion had killed 320 men and injured 400. Paterson said the challenging spirit of the Equal Justice Society is that of the mutineers. The music was so well received, she says, that some people suggested that the Oakland Ballet perform it next year, its 40th anniversary.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/16/DDGAB9A1KV1.DTL