Montford Point Marine Association

Today Marines serve in a fully integrated Corps in which African Americans comprise one-fifth of the total troop strength. African-American officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted personnel are omnipresent, their service such a normal part of Marine life that it escapes notice. The fact that this was not always so, that there was a time when there were no black Marines, should not be overlooked.

In the months before Pearl Harbor, as the nation's attention became increasingly drawn to the horrors gripping Europe and the Pacific, President Franklin D. Roosevelt - at the urging of his wife, Eleanor, and faced with the threat of a march on Washington by civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph signed Executive Order 8802, establishing the Fair Employment Practice Commission and prohibiting racial discrimination by any government agency. With a stroke of his pen FDR had officially opened to blacks not only positions in the post office and other federal bureaucracies, but also in one of America's most celebrated all white bastions: The United States Marine Corps.

In compliance with the order, which was controversial to say the least, the Marine Corps began recruitment of black enlistees on June 1, 1942 at Camp Montford Point, now known as Camp Lejeune, which was then little more than a field carved out of a dense North Carolina pine forest. Camp Montford Point would become the recruitment and advanced training facility for all black marine enlistees, from 1942 through 1949, when the practice of fielding completely segregated units would be dropped in favor of the fully integrated force we know today.

James E. "Jimmy" Stewart, Sr., of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was responsible for the first black person, a young man from Langston University named Alfred Masters [1], to be recruited, one minute after midnight, and sworn in the USMC. Stewart himself eventually enlisted shortly after. Jimmy volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 and served with the first ever battalion of Black Marines. He was discharged in 1945 with the rank of Tech Sergeant and returned to Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company.

From its humble beginnings, Camp Montford Point would rise to the occasion and pass over 20,000 African Americans through its hallowed grounds, and men who became Marines at Camp Montford Point would go on to serve their country with honor and distinction during the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and beyond. Now years later, from the days at Iwo Jima, to the battles reaching us by way of headlines in Iraq, Black marines have proudly borne their nation's flag in combat.

External Links

• Montford Point Marine Association web site - complete history
• Alfred Masters - photo