The Marines of Montford Point

America's First Black Marines

Melton A. McLaurin

• Editore: The University of North Carolina Press
• Anno: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780807898628
• Argomento: Scienze sociali
• Categoria: Studi afroamericani

With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps--the last all-white branch of the U.S. military--was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina. Between 1942 and 1949 (when the base was closed as a result of President Truman's 1948 order fully desegregating all military forces) more than 20, 000 men trained at Montford Point, most of them going on to serve in the Pacific Theatre in World War II as members of support units. This book, in conjunction with the documentary film of the same name, tells the story of these Marines for the first time. Drawing from interviews with 60 veterans, The Marines of Montford Point relates the experiences of these pioneers in their own words. From their stories, we learn about their reasons for enlisting; their arrival at Montford Point and the training they received there; their lives in a segregated military and in the Jim Crow South; their experiences of combat and service in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; and their legacy. The Marines speak with flashes of anger and humor, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with great wisdom, and always with a pride fostered by incredible accomplishment in the face of adversity. This book serves to recognize and to honor the men who desegregated the Marine Corps and loyally served their country in three major wars.

Chapter 1
Home Towns

In May 1942 Major General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the Marine Corps, ordered the Corps’s Southern, Eastern, and Central Recruiting Divisions to begin recruiting African Americans on June 1. The Southern Division was to supply approximately half of the initial 900 recruits envisioned, the other two divisions about 200 men each. Given the opportunity, young men, and some no longer young, responded. The Corps instructed recruiters to enlist only those with the skills needed to prepare Montford Point, still very much under construction, for the training of future recruits. As a result, the initial recruits who trained at Montford Point were, on average, better educated and slightly older than their counterparts at the white boot camp at Parris Island. Many had some college education, although others had lacked an opportunity to continue their education beyond elementary school. A number of professionals, especially teachers, joined, as did some skilled tradesmen and laborers. Other recruits had participated in ROTC, the Boy Scouts, or high school drill teams. They came from a variety of backgrounds, from the rural South and the big cities of the North, from small towns and country hamlets, from tenant farms and urban factories. Like their white counterparts, they were representative of the nation. Unlike their white counterparts, however—or at least to a different degree—they were, whether or not they sought to be, representatives of their race.

Fred Ash I was born in Mississippi, a little town called Delisle. It’s a French town. I [lived] with mother, naturally, and a father, and my whole family lived mostly with my grandmother, my mother’s mother. We were very, very poor actually, but we were sort of wealthy, because we had livestock they call oxen. And at the age of twelve or thirteen, I think I was what I would say a professional ox driver. My parents had two yokes of oxen. Oxens was powerful animals, more so than mules and horses. And we’d use them for plowing. We’d use them for cleaning up new ground and whatever else that was necessary that they needed heavy equipment, like they didn’t have during that time, but they do have today. We use our oxens to do that. And salaries was very low. For a yoke of oxens and a driver, the salary was only about $2.00, $2.50 a day.

My education was a little bit slim. During the time I was going to school, we only had the little rural school, one-room school. We only had about three months of schooling. And then they kept on raising it, raising it. They raised it up to six months, and I ended up, before I came in the Marine Corps, I dropped out in about the eighth grade; but after I got in the Marine Corps, I finished my education. I went on to complete the twelfth grade.

Adner Batts I was born at Edgecombe, North Carolina, seventy-five years ago, this day [said in 2004]. I was born in a family of two boys, two girls. I lost my dad when I was a year old, I don’t remember him, and my mother, when I was seventeen. Where we lived was just on the inside of the Pender County line, on Highway 17, south, seventy-five yards south, just on the inside of the line. I was raised in a home with the five of us, and I was a seventh grade dropout. Lost my mother when I was seventeen years old. I attended school at a little place you call Edgecombe, well, of course, that was where the [train] station was, the trains was running, in those days. And the school room carried about six grades. And then when you got to seventh grade, you had to go to Rocky Point. And we had to get a bus to go to Rocky Point. Of course, all the communities, about five communities, which namely, Woodside, Topsail, Edgecombe, Brown Town, and others, had to purchase a bus. The state wouldn’t provide a bus because black people in that area wasn’t making enough money to purchase a bus, so the churches got together, purchased a bus. And then we started going to school at Rocky Point, so that’s where I dropped out of seventh grade at Rocky Point, in North Carolina.

Herman Darden Jr. Well, I’m from Washington, D.C. I did my high school training there, graduated from Dunbar High School, in Washington, D.C., went to the Junior ROTC; at that time, they were just called the Cadet Corps. And I rose to the rank of commander of my battalion, and I happened to be in the company that won first prize. We used to have a drill competition at the old Griffith Stadium, in Washington, D.C. Well, this was just between the black schools, because there were two school districts. We were in District 13, which was all black, so our competition sportswise, and otherwise, was just between the black schools. And when the war started in 1941, actually, I was still in school at that time, and the war started in 1941, I applied and was accepted as a apprentice machinist at the Navy yard, Washington Navy Yard, working on five-inch guns, torpedo tubes, and things of that nature.

Charles Davenport I am from a town south of Pittsburgh, called Monongahela, Pennsylvania; it’s named after the Monongahela River. I was born on July the 28th, 1923, in that town. I went to school there, graduated from Notting Hill High School in 1941. I majored [in] a commercial course at that time. After graduating form high school, and prior to that, my dad was a master electrician, and he taught my brother and I the electric trade. And following graduation, I went to work at a local hospital.

David Dinkins I was born July 10th, 1927. I was born in Trenton, New Jersey. And when I was six or seven years old, my mother and father separated. My mother came to New York City, where she lived with her mother, my grandmother. And they were domestics; they cooked and cleaned for folks for a dollar a day. For these were the Depression years. So we lived in Harlem. As I love to tell people, we moved a lot. We moved when the rent was due. It seemed like a good time to move. But I was a happy child. I never, never went to bed hungry, and my clothes were clean, because my mother and grandmother scrubbed them, and didn’t have holes ’cause they sewed them up. I had toys. When the little white children got through with their toys, they [my mother and grandmother] brought their toys home. So I did all right. And then I went to Trenton about junior high school, lived with my father. And I was there in Trenton up through high school, entered the service, and college. Then I came back to New York, where I’ve been ever since. And I got involved in government and politics and eventually became the mayor of New York City, elected in ’89, served for one term, four years, commencing January 1st, 1990.

Gene Doughty I was born in the city of Stamford, often confused with Stamford in California, but this is Stamford, Connecticut. I was born there in 1924, and at the age of six moved with my family to New York City, where I remained until the time I was selected to go into the Marine Corps. That would include all of my preliminary education, my primary education. I had one year in college at City College, majored in physical and health education. I elected to go into the Marine Corps once I had found out that the doors were open in recruitment for Afro-Americans.

Frederick Drake I was born in south Alabama, Marengo County. And I was from a long line of long livers. My mother, I buried her about two years ago [said in 2003]. She was 102. Her mother didn’t live quite as long. She lived to be 99. But her two grandmothers lived to be, one 116 and one 127. They lived a long time, and it was a strong family of skilled slaves in Marengo County.

But anyway, that’s where I was born, and my mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a businessman of a sort in that day. We moved from Marengo County into Jefferson County, which is Birmingham [and] Bessemer, Alabama. And my uncles all were coal miners. Well, my dad said, none of my boys, he had four boys, he said, none of my boys will be down there digging no coal.

And I went on. I finished high school and enrolled in college, a [African Methodist Episcopal] church school there in Birmingham, Payne University [Daniel Payne College]. Dad, his business was hauling coal. We lived in a coal mining community there. And he wasn’t able to send [me to] a major college. But I went on and enrolled in any way at Payne. And, ’cause he [my father] had made a vow, said none of my boys will ever work in the coal mine. All my uncles did. But his [my father’s] oldest son went on and got a job in the coal mine. This was in, I think I went to work in the coal mine about ’48 [1938]. I went to work in there. And I was going to get enough money where I could go to college. I worked down there. But the war came along. And after Pearl Harbor, we had to serve.

James Ferguson I was born Washington, D.C., on April the 27th, 1924. I’m an only child, son of Lucy and Henry Ferguson. I attended school in Washington, D.C. I graduated from one of the top high schools in the United States, and that was Dunbar High School. And it was segregated. And Dunbar High School was such a good high school because so many of the teachers at Dunbar High, due the segregation, they had to teach high school when they normally would have been teaching at a school such as Harvard, Notre Dame, and places like that. So we were beneficiaries of all of these great teachers, and I took four years of Latin. When I left, graduated from Dunbar, I could read Latin as fluently as I can read English. The whole time that I was overseas in the Marine Corps, I took my Latin book, Virgil’s Aeneid, and I read Virgil’s Aeneid like people read the Bible, and I still have that book at home now. But I’m not that good in Latin because you have to stay in practice and I’m not, I haven’t practiced reading Latin now in years. Overall, I had a very good education in D.C. I liked D.C. and I still live in D.C., and things have improved a lot.

I was an only child, son of Henry and Lucy Ferguson. And my mother was born in Danville, Virginia; my father was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. And I’d like to tell you a story about my father’s grandfather, who was a slave. And he [my father] used to tell me many stories about his grandfather and his stories that he told him. So, before my father died, I got him on tape, and one story that he would tell me about his grandfather is that he would constantly be trying to escape. He had whip marks all over him for being caught after trying to escape. And then one escape attempt, my father says, he got all the way to the Potomac River before the paddy roll caught him. Now, they used to call the [slave] patrol the paddy roll. Their job was to capture escaped slaves. So they caught him, but they never would kill him because he was a good worker. But the sign of being a good worker and escapee were all the strike marks on his back. And I did get that on tape, so that’s an old history of my father’s father, great-grandfather and his experiences as a slave.

Paul Hagan Before I went in the Marine Corps, my mother and father died when I was a little baby. So, I don’t remember anything about my mother and my father. But I had a brother and a sister, two brothers and a sister. We was from Alabama but we come to Georgia, and that’s where we were living. So when they [my parents] died, we had a home and everything, and we lost everything we had because we was so young, we didn’t know what tax was about. And I went from place to place and the people that raised me, they raised me on a farm in a place they called Roopville, Georgia, until I was old enough to join the Marine Corps. They wasn’t no kin to me. And, of course, like I said, I didn’t have no kin people in Georgia. The ones that was in Alabama, I didn’t know nothing about them. So we had no kin, I just knew that the people that took me in was a friend of my mother and father. When I went in the Marine Corps, my education level was the seventh grade back in that day. But I still, after [I] become Marine Corps, I finish high school. We worked on that farm sunup to sundown, six days a week. And I really enjoyed myself because I didn’t have no home or anything. And they treated me just like I was one of their children.

F. M. Hooper I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. My mother and father migrated from the state of North Carolina and four children, myself, I am the oldest, and I have one brother and two sisters. I’m a graduate of Boys' High School, Brooklyn, New York. I played; I liked to play in the streets of Brooklyn. We played soldier, cowboys and Indians. I attended movies, and I loved to watch Marine Corps movies, especially during World War II. And during the war I observed the battleship USS North Carolina being constructed, as well as U.S. Marines guarding the ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. My mother was a former schoolteacher, but she, at the time raising four children, she was just a housewife. My father was a laborer. He did work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard also during World War II. While I was in school I worked part-time jobs and also summer jobs in the garment section of Manhattan. As well as stores, downtown in Brooklyn, grocery stores, and I did a lot of work on my own. I worked in local candy stores and selling newspapers, did a lot of odd jobs, you know, so, just went around the city and tried to [get jobs in] like people’s homes. I used to go in and the lady would ask me to do some windows for her, which I did.

Leroy Mack I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. My mother, Margaret Mack, or Margaret Jenkins first, is from West Virginia. My father, Leroy John Mack, is from Charleston, South Carolina. He is, or he was at that time of meeting my mother, he was a reserve sailor. He had sailed in the United States Navy as a cook. My brother was bitten on the ear in Brooklyn and my father said, it’s time for us to move, so we moved to Amityville, Long Island. I had gone to school in Brooklyn, and attended PS 14. And when we moved to Amityville, then I attended Amityville Junior High and High School. But high school wasn’t for me. Sports was the thing for me, and finally my father looked at me and he said, it’s time for you to realize that schooling is not for you. So I suggest you join the Marine Corps.

Archibald Mosley I was born in Carbondale, Illinois, which is southern Illinois. And they called it Little Egypt because that it’s on the borderline of the South. You have southern weather, as well as northern weather. It’s so many miles away from Chicago, and so you don’t get the winds off of the lake. But you do get the breezes from the south. It’s only fifty miles north of where the Ohio and the Mississippi River meets. That’s where I was born. And the reason I mentioned about Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi meets is fifty miles north is that you are coming from the South on the Illinois Central from New Orleans and going to Chicago or vice versa.

If you leave Chicago going to New Orleans to visit a relative, you can sit anywhere you want on the Illinois Central until you get to Cairo, Illinois. You’re going across the Mason-Dixon Line and you have to sit in the front, first coach of the steam engine train. And the reason I emphasize steam engine is in those days, the steam engines were done by coal. And that is what my father’s occupation was. My father’s occupation was known as a boilermaker. And he cleaned out those trains, steam engine trains, and kept them running and functioning.

He insisted that education was important in our family. And there were seven kids, four girls and three boys. And out of the bunch, all of us but one out of seven ended up being a professional person in life, during those days of the ’20s and the ’30s.

Herman Nathaniel Before I joined the Marines, I lived in Sumter, South Carolina. I was born in Sumter, South Carolina. Went to Lincoln High School. Graduated from Lincoln High School. And went a little while at Morris College, which is also in Sumter. And also, a short stint at South Carolina State [University]. And afterwards I took a welding course and went to take a job in Chester, Pennsylvania, at Sun Ship Building.

Carrol Reavis I’m the fifth child of seventeen children in the family. I was born on May 11th, 1923, in Virginia, a place off Western Road, about twelve miles from the North Carolina line. And my father worked for my grandfather, who ran a mill that ground corn and wheat owned by a white family, [a member of which] was the chief of police in the town of Lawrenceville, Virginia. This was in 1923. In 1925, the dam broke, and we had to move back to my grandmother’s house about ten miles away into a slave house. Most people have forgot about slavery, but my grandmother’s father had inherited part of a plantation, including the main house, and they still maintained a couple of the slave houses.

We moved into the slave house. My father at that time had six kids, six of them, and I grew up there, and then in 1926, this must [have been] ’26 or ’27, [we had] the big snow. That was the year that Lindbergh flew across; we used to hear that Lindbergh crossing Atlantic. I was a little kid at that time, but I can remember. I must’ve been four or five years old. So I grew up there, and my mother kept having children. By the time I was seven years old, the Depression came along. You’ve probably heard of that, and my grandfather had left, and we went into almost slavery again, because everything was tight, no money.

My grandmother got sick and she died. So my father, with being the oldest son of that family, wound up with three of his sisters and one brother, plus his own family and no money, ’cause all the money they had in the bank had been gone. So he sold, he hocked the house and just hocked everything, and we went back into slavery again with nothing. We had to go back into sharecropping, and that’s where I grew up, and I’ve been working ever since. I finished the third grade in school. By the time I was twelve, I was working full time. Fifteen, I was a grown man. Sixteen, I was in the Civilian Conservation Corps, where my family received $25.00 a month. I stayed there until it broke up in 1942. I was in there when the war broke out, and then I went to work for the Navy, the Yorktown Navy Yard depot at the TNT plant there. And then I became a third-class fireman, worked in the fire, boiler room. I was drafted from there into the Marine Corps in 1943.

Steven Robinson I attended public schools in [the] city of Pittsburgh. I graduated from Schilling High School in May of 1942 at the age of seventeen, at which time I was interested in enlisting in the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which was at that time training down at Tuskegee. I was a student pilot. I was flying at Jay Creek Trainer at the Greensburg Airport just out, about fifty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. And I logged about forty hours flying time.

And I had a foster brother who was older than I who was graduated Penn State, who was at that time down at Tuskegee. As a matter of fact he graduated from Tuskegee and was a fighter pilot in Italy and, as a matter of fact, was killed in Italy while in combat. But upon graduating from high school in 1942, I attempted to enlist, as I said, in the Air Corps. It was the Air Corps then, not the Air Force.

And they told me that I didn’t have the qualifications because at that time, they only asked Americans to take over the list for people who has at least a Bachelor’s Degree. Of course, I was just out of high school. And while my attempting to [enlist], of course, I was told that the requirements were dropping from the War Department almost monthly. They said keep trying back, that maybe I would be accepted later on, but not then. However, on my way after about maybe a month or so, I was noticed by [a] recruiting sergeant, the gunny sergeant at the post office area of Pittsburgh. He saw me down just about every other day and he wanted to know why I was coming down and I told him I was coming down to enlist in the Air Corps. He asked me if I was interested in the Marine Corps. And I told him not at that particular time.

George Taylor Well, I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. My mother, we moved to Chicago when I was four years of age. My grandmother raised me. And my grandfather. My dad was a barber in Chicago. But my mother and father separated when I was a young boy. And then, my grandmother and grandfather raised me until I was grown. And my grandfather was a plaster contractor. And he learned me how to plaster. And my [grandfather was a] very religious person, Church of God in Christ, so, you know, no smoking, no gambling, no, none of that dancing, and all that stuff. And I didn’t go no further than the eighth grade. Plus there in Chicago, at the time I came up, it was rough, out there in that street.

Joseph Walker I was born in Richmond, Virginia, April 20, 1924. My family moved back to Durham [North Carolina] in 1925. And of course at that time there was only three of us [children] in our family who were living. An older sister, two brothers who had passed, and of course myself and a younger brother, were the ones who actually moved back to Durham. My mother was a homemaker; my dad worked at Lig...