The Senses of Silence

Honoring Lloyd Anthony McKinney and the Port Chicago 50

A lineage carried forward. A silence finally spoken.

A Historical Memoir A story buried for eighty years. A silence carried through generations. A grandson who refused to let the truth die. Senses of Silence is the historical memoir of Lloyd Anthony McKinney — a Black sailor, a survivor of the Port Chicago explosion, and one of the fifty men the U.S. Navy wrongfully convicted of mutiny in 1944. He never spoke of it. The silence raised a family. This book breaks it.

What the Book Is About The explosion. The explosion. The trial. The silence. The lineage. On July 17, 1944, Port Chicago erupted in the largest home-front disaster of World War II. 320 men died. Lloyd survived — only to be charged with mutiny for refusing to return to unsafe conditions. He was twenty. He was convicted. He came home carrying a truth the Navy spent decades burying. He died at forty-one. The silence lived on. Senses of Silence follows the journey of his grandson — you — as you uncover the story your family was never given, confront the weight of inherited trauma, and reclaim a name history tried to erase. This is not just a history book. It is a reckoning.

Senses of Silence follows the journey of his grandson — you — as you uncover the story your family was never given, confront the weight of inherited trauma, and reclaim a name history tried to erase. This is not just a history book. It is a reckoning.

Why This Story Matters Because silence is not peace — it's pressure. For generations, Black families have carried untold stories — losses, injustices, erasures — without language to explain the weight. Your grandfather's silence shaped your childhood, your identity, your discipline, your clarity. This book is the act of speaking what he could not. It is the restoration of a man's honor. It is the return of a lineage to itself.