In the early days of the Vietnam War, African-American service members represented less than five percent of personnel in the United States Navy.

This resulted in stiff competition, allowing Navy recruiters to enlist only the top performers on the Armed Forces Qualification Test.

Politically, black sailors tended to support the advancement of social minorities in the Navy, views which conflicted with the obstacles they were faced with due to their lack of education.

Around 12:30 am on 9 October, another incident occurred when Dwight Horton, a black airman en route to Kitty Hawk, was arrested for fighting with two white petty officers.

[8] On the afternoon of 12 October, while Kitty Hawk was participating in Operation Linebacker off the coast of North Vietnam, three black sailors went on deck.

Thirty minutes after flight operations, one of those black sailors, 18-year-old Airman Apprentice Terry Avinger, went to the mess deck to eat and requested two sandwiches.

[1] Upset about what transpired, Avinger went to a bunk area where black sailors regularly got together and expressed his frustration about the way they were being subjugated by whites on the ship, telling them he regretted "that he didn't just beat the racist cracker's ass right there."

"[1] The black sailors then went into the ship's passageway and armed themselves with makeshift weapons – broom handles, wrenches, a foam fog nozzle and pieces of pipe.

News of what was happening reached Kitty Hawk's half‐black/half‐Native executive officer, Commander Ben Cloud, who had been aboard the ship for eight weeks.

Informed that the situation was potentially deadly, Cloud went on the ship's communication system and ordered the violence to stop, pleading for the black sailors to go to the aft mess and for the Marines to stand down and go to the forecastle.

[1] Cloud went to the mess deck to talk to the black sailors for about an hour, trying to calm them down and assure them that he could be trusted: "For the first time, you have a brother who is an executive officer.

Groups of between five and twenty-five black sailors continued to roam Kitty Hawk, attacking whites at random throughout the night.

At 3:00 a.m., Townsend told Cloud he did not want large groups of blacks congregating in the mess hall, and likened the gathering to a "victory party.

Many white sailors aboard the massive ship were unaware that the incident had occurred, and began to hear rumors when they awoke.

Becoming increasingly angry, about 150 white sailors began to arm themselves and congregated in a berthing compartment, readying themselves for what they thought would be an outright racial battle for control of Kitty Hawk.

[13] Six weeks after the incident, Kitty Hawk returned to San Diego, California, where twenty-seven black sailors were arrested and charged.

Laurie also demonstrated racist leanings when he expressed his regret for not being armed on the night of the riot since it would have allowed him to have killed "at least 30 of them [black sailors].

On November 3, as Constellation was sailing toward San Diego, black sailors staged a sit-down strike in the enlisted men's mess deck.

Captain Ward avoided meeting directly with the men because, according to a public relations officer, that would have implied a "recognition of some sort of union" and a "breakdown of the chain of command."

Seaman Edward A. Martinez was elected as a representative, but attempts at mediation with an officer, Commander Yacabucci, did not succeed in defusing the situation.

At the dock in San Diego on Nov. 4, there was another sit-down protest, and 120 sailors who did not return to the ship were charged with being ashore without leave, receiving light punishments.

[13] Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP, called the Navy's handling of the incident a "despicable perversion of justice" of the black sailors who were victims of "a spurious effort to discredit them, categorize them, and keep them in menial, low-paying jobs.

"[2][3] However, despite these accounts, Floyd Hicks, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee, determined that the incident "consisted of unprovoked attacks" by blacks against whites.

[2][10][14] The subcommittee wrote that "the riot on Kitty Hawk consisted of unprovoked assaults by a very few men, most of whom were below-average mental capacity, most of whom had been aboard for less than one year, and all of whom were black.