Standing Tall

Willie Long vs. U.S. Government
at Mare Island Naval Shipyard

An important, yet long unknown story about the civil rights movement is now brought to life through Jake Sloan’s inspiring firsthand, well-researched account of the courage and activism of a brave group of African American men working at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California during the 1960s.

Jake Sloan has spent most of his adult life working in the areas of civil rights and affirmative action, advocating, and fighting for opportunity and income equality for African Americans. After serving honorably in the military, he started his career as a pipefitter, mainly working on the construction of nuclear submarines at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. During that time, he became the youngest member of the “Original 21ers”. After that experience and leaving that field, while attending college, he worked primarily in programs directed at equal access and equality in training and pay for African Americans in the construction building trades of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. Since 1985, he has continued that work as owner of Davillier-Sloan, Inc., one of California’s largest labor-management consulting firms, with a focus on the construction industry. Mr. Sloan holds an M.A. in History from San Francisco State University. Recently Mr. Sloan was recognized as a “Visionary for Diversity” by the Marcus Foster Education Institute in Oakland, California.

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Mare Island Original 21/25 activists forced sweeping civil rights change

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In 1961, more than 1,000 African Americans worked at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. For decades, they had suffered under organized, systematic, and, sometimes, unconscious discriminatory working conditions in hiring, training, promotions, and equal pay opportunities.

Standing Tall: Willie Long Willie Long vs. U.S. Government at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, a new book by Jake Sloan, is an inspiring firsthand account of historic events in the civil rights movement that took place at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the 1960s. In this book, the author recounts his role as one of the Mare Island Original 21/25, an activist group of pipefitters, mechanics, welders, painters and laborers working at the shipyard. As a pipefitter, he worked side by side with other men who suffered under unfair labor practices at the shipyard.

The unsung heroes of the Mare Island Original 21/25 and their historic racial discrimination complaint filed with the President’s Committee for Equal Job Opportunities on November 17, 1961, led to sweeping change in the unfair labor practices at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and played a part in influencing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other affirmative action initiatives that continue to benefit African Americans across the United States today.

The Mare Island Original 21/25

Willie Long, Sr. - Founding President

Boston Banks, Jr.
Matthew Barnes
Robert Borden
Eddie Brady
Willie Capers
James Colbert
James Davis
Kermit Day
Charlies Fluker
Louis Greer
James D. Hall
Virgil Herndon

Jimmie James
Levi Jones
Thomas King
Herbert Lane
Matthew Luke
John L. McGee
Herman Moore
W.J. Price
Charles Scales
Jesse "Jake" Sloan
Brodie Taylor
Clarence Williams

Honorary Members

John Edmondson
Vernon Taylor

Attorney for Mare Island Original 21/25

Charles Wilson, Esq.

"Across the country, there are unmarked graves of unsung heroes and heroines who represent countless acts of resistance which stand as testaments to the enduring struggle of African American people in the struggle for equality, democracy and economic justice. Standing Tall: The Mare Island Original 21ers, is a monument that brings to light a virtually unknown group of men who made history by standing up for what was right and just."

 — Leonard McNeil, former council member and mayor of the City of San Pablo, California, retired political science professor at Contra Costa College, and retired union iron worker in Local #378

Timeline

1947

Willie Long starts work at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California.

December 1, 1955

Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refuses to give up her seat in the colored section to a white man after the whites-only section was filled on a municipal bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

September 5, 1957

President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to protect nine black students integrating Central High School in Little Rock.

1961

Willie Long, Sr. led the Mare Island Original 21ers activist group with other workers at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

March 6, 1961

President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10925 prohibiting federal government contractors from discriminating on account of race and establishing the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

November 17, 1961

Mare Island Original 21ers file the Complaint of Racial Discrimination with the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

1962

Willie Long, Sr. and Boston Banks attend a meeting with President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in Los Angeles where Hobart Taylor, special counsel to the PCEO and confidant of Lyndon Johnson, is in attendance. This meeting may have partially influenced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

August 28, 1963

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous I Have A Dream speech to a massive group of civil rights marchers at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington DC.

July 2, 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

1996

Mare Island Naval Shipyard closes.

January 4, 2006

Congressional Record Tribute to the Mare Island Original 21ers.

November 17, 2010

The Original 21/25 Memorial Unveiling Ceremony (Mare Island – Vallejo, California).

November 8, 2016

Jake Sloan, the youngest member of the Mare Island Original 21/25, publishes "Standing Tall: Willie Long & The Mare Island Original 21ers."

July 31, 2023

Jake Sloan publishes a revised account of the Original 21ers: "Standing Tall: Willie Long vs. U.S. Government at Mare Island Naval Shipyard" with America Through Time an imprint of Fonthill Media.

"There was a Martin Luther King movement at that time. There was an uproar throughout the nation at that time in trying to get equality. And I said to myself, 'If these people in the South can die for what they believe in, certainly I can put this little job on the line for what I believe in,' "

 — Willie Long, Sr., leader of the Mare Island Original 21/25

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Standing Tall: Willie Long vs. U.S. Government at Mare Island Naval Shipyard
An important, yet long unknown story about the civil rights movement is now brought to life through Jake Sloan’s inspiring firsthand, well-researched account of the courage and activism of a brave group of African American men working at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California during the 1960s..