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F: The Marine Corps was the last military service in the United States to accept black volunteers, and when it did in 1942, North Carolina was the training grounds. More on the Montford Point Marines next, on Black Issues Forum.
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Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
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Holt: Hello everyone. Welcome to Black Issues Forum. I'm Deborah Holt in for Mitchell Lewis and Natalie Bullock-Brown.
Each year we set aside the 11th of November in honor and remembrance of all the military veterans who have served our country. Since Revolutionary War times and before, blacks have fought in the Army and the Navy for the freedoms of our nation, although they did not always share in those freedoms and were not always welcome to fight, particularly in the Air Force and the Marines. Many note Tuskegee, Alabama as the home of the training grounds for the first black flying unit in the Army air forces, but not as well known is the name Montford Point in North Carolina where the first black Marines were trained. In a few moments, we'll talk to a Montford Point Marine and also one of only 13 African Americans who have achieved the rank of General in the Marines.
First, Christine Rogers brings us this brief report on the history of the Montford Point Marines and how it's being preserved today in Onslow County.
M: These men were men of integrity, men that had pride about not only who they were, but the country that they wanted to serve.
Rogers: They were men from every corner of America, from big cities to small rural towns. What they had in common is the desire to serve their country in a time of need. In the process, they made history.
M: The Marine Corps had an exclusionary clause that kept African Americans from joining, so they are the very first African American Marines, really. Unlike the Army and the Navy, which had African Americans in the service, the Marine Corps did not. So in that sense, they're a huge part of the story of beginning to desegregate institutions in American life.
M: Initially, they didn't feel that the black Marines had the mettle to do what was necessary to be the kind of Marines that the Marine Corps expected. I would think they would have to be very courageous to go into, maybe, basically push themselves into a situation that they really wanted.
Rogers: The first African American Marines received their basic training at Montford Point between 1942 and 1949. Orvia Cottman [ph] was one of them.
Cottman: Sergeant Major Buford Smith [ph], he was receiving a citation from President Johnson.
Rogers: Orvia Cottman now volunteers his time at the Montford Point Museum, a museum dedicated to preserving the history of the first African American Marines. He served with people like Edgar Huff and Gilbert Johnson, the first black drill instructors.
Rogers: Was he tough?
Cottman: Oh, yes, ma'am. Yes.
Rogers: But fair.
Cottman: But fair, tough but fair.
Rogers: The story of the Montford Point Marines is one of loyalty and service to the nation in the face of prejudice and discrimination.
M: Hey said to me, he said, "Sarge, they wouldn't sell us any Coke." I said, "What do you mean, they wouldn't sell you any Coke?" He said, "Oh, there was a sign on the door and the sign said 'No Indians, Mexicans, niggers or dogs allowed.'" And if you had seen the hurt in that boy's eyes.
M: Prejudice was very much a part of the world in which they lived, and they encountered whether they were in uniform or whether they were out of uniform. Didn't make any difference.
M: I guess it's something that you, in growing up, you understood the situation, and that's the way it was at that time.
M: When you're talking about weaving the fabric that had made America great, I think that those men felt like that was another part of the fabric that needed to be rewoven, and they chose to be a part of that.
Cottman: Sergeant Griggs [ph] says he's grateful to the Montford Marines for paving the road for those who followed in their footsteps.
Griggs: It could not have happened had those Montford Point Marines stepped up to the plate, and realized, and made America realize that we can do this. Just give us a chance. They weren't demanding. They just said, "Give us a chance." And they done that. And in the opinion of myself and others, they done it well, and I think America can attest to that also.
M: They are very much a part of the Great Generation, and they clearly faced obstacles that the majority of society did not face in making the sacrifices they made within that Great Generation.
F: [READING] "This is to inform that your husband [ph], Sergeant Major __ Hartford [ph], Marine Corps, was injured on 30 January 1968."
Rogers: The Montford Museum is filled with memorabilia that helps tell the story of the first African American Marines, captured moments of life on a base that was for many of them, far from home. There are hundreds of photographs still to be catalogued of young recruits, friends and fellow soldiers, and even visits on base from famous entertainers like Louis Armstrong.
Whether it was patriotism, a passion to prove themselves, or simply a paycheck that motivated these young men to join, they were all proud to call themselves a Marine.
M: Marines that we've talked to all felt that being in the Corps was one of the high points of their life, they will tell you it gave them self-confidence, it gave them the attitude that they could go out and do whatever needed to be done; it gave them discipline.
M: This is a part of a legacy of the Marine Corps, a legacy of America, a legacy of people of color. And be able to see how all those attributes were woven together to make America stronger, that's what I want people to leave here understanding.
Holt: I'd like to welcome to the program James R. Carter, a Montford Point Marine who volunteered for the service in April of 1943 and who served in the Pacific and Hawaii during World War II. We also have with us retired brigadier George H. Walls, Jr., who served on active duty for over 28 years until retiring at the rank of Brigadier General in 1993.
Thank you both for being here with us today. It's a pleasure to have you. Recognize anyone from that story?
Carter: Sure.
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Holt: Perhaps Orvia, or certainly I know that both of you know who Huff and also Hashmark are.
Walls: Yes. Yes.
Carter: Huff was my commanding officer in the Marine Corps in boot camp. He's the one who, you might say, gave me the works. Made us Marines, that's what he said he said he was going to do. He said we're going to start off with a whole platoon, and you don't know how many you're going to end up with, but you don't know what will happen to you, but the few that come through will be Marines. That's what Huff said, according to Huff.
Walls: I knew Sergeant Major Huff and Hashmark later in both their careers and they were of course icons for black Marines, and they were my mentors. Until the day he died, Sergeant Major Huff was one of my closest friends. I often sought him out for advice and often got wise council, some of it wanted, and some of it not [LAUGHS]. They were very outspoken gentleman and pioneers.
Holt: Well, I'm going to also start with you first, Sergeant Carter, by kind of taking you back to that time when you actually decided to volunteer for the Marines. Now there's a book out, and it's called American Patriots by Gail Buckley, and according to that book, on June 25th, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, 8802, and that's the order that essentially banned discrimination in the armed forces. The Marines didn't move. Then about a month after Pearl Harbor, the president emphasized this order in a memo to the Navy and in August of 1942, the Marine Corps accepted its first group of black volunteers. Now, how did you find out that the Marines was accepting volunteers, and why did you want to volunteer?
Carter: Well, in June of 1942, I picked up a newspaper, and it said that blacks could-well, we weren't black then, we were colored-but we could get into the Marine Corps. So I had recently graduated from high school and was unable to go to college because I had two brothers already in college, so they told me to wait until they got out and they would send me. But anyway, when I saw that in the paper, I said "That's what I want to do. I wanted to be a Marine." So I immediately tried to get in the Marine Corps.
Holt: And what happened?
Carter: Well, I thought I had passed all the examinations when I went up, but the guys that were recruiters said, "You're colorblind." And I questioned him, and he's a white boy, now, that's something you were not supposed to do in my time, to question anything the white man said. But anyway, I questioned him. I said, "No, I'm not colorblind. Give me the chart again." So I went through and looked at the chart again. So then he said, "You're knock-kneed. Stand up." So I stood up. I said, "Man, no way in the world I can be knock-kneed [LAUGHS], look at me again." So he sent me back to the doctor that I had just passed by. He examined me, and the doctor put a scope on me and he took a stamp that said "rejected" and sent me back home.
Holt: So when did you finally get accepted, and how did that feel?
Carter: Well, that made me feel bad and it made me angry too. But about two months later I got greetings from Uncle Sam saying "We want you." So I immediately went to the draft board and I said, "You can do that to me, I'm a volunteer. You don't have to draft me." They said, "Well, selective service is taking over now, so you've got to go back through the channels." I said, "Well, put me on the first bus." And I told them, I said "Now, if I pass the examination, I am going in the Marine Corps only, and if you don't let me go in the Marine Corps only, if I pass the test, then you can put me in jail or do anything else you want to, because I'm gonna be a Marine or nothing."
Holt: You know, that's really significant because it seems as though to be a Marine had a different significance. Can you talk about that for us, General?
Walls: It has always been that way before and since the Marine Corps was integrated. First Sergeant Carter and the men who went through Montford Point are often referred to as the chosen few, and from his story you can tell that it was not always easy even though the executive order had been signed to get into the Marine Corps, but there is a very proud tradition among all people who have had the opportunity to serve that being a Marine is the epitome, it's the thing to do, it's the thing that you want to be, and once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine.
Holt: And I'd like to quote something that you may have remembered hearing, first to Sergeant. Now this also appears in Gail Buckley's book, and she actually quotes Major General Henry L. Larson in the summer of 1943, and he says, "Dogs in the infantry to serve as sentries, women in the Marines, then I saw you people in uniforms. Uncle Sam surely must be losing the war." How'd that make you feel?
Carter: Well, it insulted all of us. And so that was my first recognition of what we were up against, because I though that once I got in the Marines, being a Marine would erase everything. I guess I was not able-bodied, you know. But I said, they don't have regulations out, so if we're going to the Marines, we're going to be Marines only, and that will make me a first-class American. So that was my feeling, and I got disappointed.
Holt: Now when you finally did get in, what were you trained to do?
Carter: Well, we all took basic training, and we trained as infantrymen, and at that point, they sort of split up and put you all through different branches; well, we didn't have anything much to go about. After that they started a steward branch, which means they were taking Marines and making servants out of them for the officers, something they had never done before. They had been getting all their stewards from the Navy, and so that was bad. And the 51st Defense Battalion that they organized, they were busting it up so to speak; they were transferring the guys to different places and especially after that speech that you just talked about, they decided immediately what we were good for, so they started creating ammunition companies and depot companies, ammunition were people who handled the __ etc., and so forth, and the depot company were the workers. You know, we'd unload ships, bury the dead, do anything that was necessary. They had m__ control companies and we just did everything that was needed to support the fighting Marines.
Holt: Let's step back a little bit. You mentioned the 51st and the significance of being able to fight in combat. General, can you talk a little bit about the 51st?
Walls: Yes, and probably First Sergeant Carter can talk about it better than I can, but the 51st Defense Battalion was organized as a fighting unit, but the majority of the Marines who were trained at Montford Point ended up, as First Sergeant Carter said, being stevedores and dock workers and that sort of thing, which probably only heightened their determination to do their job well and prove that they could be part of the Marine Corps and serve their country the way that they had enlisted to do.
Holt: And so it was really another way of holding back African Americans by not allowing blacks to fight in the combat field, but then I had read that there was another reason that it wasn't just a matter of skin color, why, for example, African Americans weren't promoted to or allowed to be officers in the Marines.
Carter: Not only were they not allowed to be officers, but they were not allowed to be in a position to give a white Marine an order. In other words, we were organizing companies, companies, and in that company, no black Marine had the rank equal to a white Marine that happened to be in the same company because we were new in the Marine Corps it was necessary for them to have NCOs to help train us and set ourselves up. But as we got rank then the white Marines had to go, because we could not get in a position to give them an order. That was official. Of course we didn't know that at the time, but during the course of the war we found this out, that there was a letter out to that effect.
Holt: So your DIs and the people who trained you at Montford Point were African American?
Carter: Mine were, but most of the whites were gone when I got there. They were still there, and they would train in some units, but see, Huff got promoted early, and Johnson, and they became DIs at __.
Holt: I'm going to take you back there again through an excerpt from Buckley's book again. And she quotes from, she uses an excerpt from a book called The Montford Point Marines: The Chosen Few, and that's by Edgar Huff, Gilbert "Hashmark" Johnson and Bill Downey. And they describe Montford Point as "a swampy, mosquito-ridden, snake- and bear-infested forest behind Camp LeJeune." What do you remember out those first 10 days of boot camp?
Carter: Well, it was tough. As I said, we had the whites, the whites were down there first training the blacks, but when the blacks got into a position to train us, like Huff and Hashmark and those other guys, whew, I don't think boot camp has ever been that tough anywhere else except Montford Point, because all restrictions were off and they could treat us just like they wanted to, close to death, they kicked us and they did mean things; they'd put us in the water and we had to hold the rifle up and don't get it wet. They had stories about Marines dying later on and they cut out some of that to some extent, but they gave us the works.
Holt: Now, certainly you didn't come through Montford Point? [LAUGHTER]
Walls: No. My experience came long after. Whenever I talk to or about the Montford Point Marines, one of the things when military units go on patrol is, you have one person who's out in front and that's the point man, and I make the analogy between Montford Point and the Montford Point Marines being the point man for all of the blacks that came into the Marine Corps behind them. My experience was quite different. I trained at Quantico, I went through OCS. By that time the Marine Corps had changed to the point where drill instructors didn't have pretty much free rein to the point of life or death over recruits, so my experience was quite different, but my experience was in great part the result of what the Montford Pointers went through to make it possible for some people to become officers in the Marine Corps where at one point it wasn't possible. So, 1965 was a long way from 1942, and my experience was quite a bit different.
Holt: Now, would you say that in comparison to, I guess the pace of change that occurred in American civilian society, how would you compare that pace of change in the acceptance to the pace of change that occurred within the military, and especially in terms of what you experienced?
Walls: Well, when I came in the Marine Corps, it was right in the midst for the Civil Rights period in the mid-'60s, so a lot of the turmoil that was happening because of the beginning of World War II, which opened the door for black Marines, it paced along I think with what was going in our country. The first black Marine was not commissioned until 1945, pretty much after the war had ended. We didn't get our first general until the early 1970s. So, as things progressed in the country, and people became more aware and more active, I think those things translated into what was happening in the military, and we came along I think with the rest of society.
Holt: Now, we have a picture, First Sergeant Carter, of you with a gentleman who earned a Purple Heart. Now, it was very rare for African Americans to be in combat. How did he earn that Purple Heart?
Carter: Well, he was on Iwo Jima, and you know, when the troops landed on Iwo Jima it took several days before they could secure the beaches, but the blacks went in right behind the combat troops because they had to bring up the supplies they've set up and so forth, so they were there, and of course, that made them in one way or another, get into battle, even though they were not the assault troops, but when you're on a small island and everybody's shooting at you [LAUGHS], you in it, see? So this boy was wounded because he was, you know, the Japs had that beach covered and he was wounded, and they sent him back to our base, which was in Hawaii and had a big parade for him, because we didn't have but very few casualties during World War II among the black Marines, but they sent him back, gave a big parade, and finally gave him the Purple Heart, and I was a part of that ceremony. After the ceremony was over, you see the picture they took. And that picture is significant is because that's the first picture of black Marines that was ever published in the Leatherneck magazine, which is the official publication of the Marine Corps. No black Marine had ever been in that before, so I thought it was significant, so maybe 10 years ago I went back to the museum in Washington, DC, and they looked that picture up for me and gave it to me, and I took it down to the museum and put it in there, because I thought it was significant.
Holt: Well, speaking of the museum, there's the Montford Point Association and the museum which we learned about a little bit earlier. We've only got a couple minutes left, and I want to talk a little bit about the Association, but first I want our viewers to know that you were actually court-martialed, and we want to know why.
Carter: Well, I was a First Sergeant, so like I said, I thought all restrictions should have been off, but in my position we went overseas and we had the white Marines mixed up all around us, but they stayed in barracks over here and we stayed in barracks over there, because they segregated us by companies. Well, the war's over, and we have all kinds of complaints, where the latrine didn't have any hot water, and we sent in work orders, and nobody's paying us any mind. So my gunner sergeant and myself decided we were going right across the street and take a shower. So I go across the street, I take a shower, and while I'm taking a shower, one of the white Marines said, "You can't wash in here because this is reserved for staff NCOs." I said, "Well, there's my shirt over there, check it out." I had six stripes and a diamond.
Holt: So that's just an example of some of the stories that you had been through.
Carter: But he said, "You still can't do it." He had me arrested. I thought I was going to get over like a fat cat, and the man said, "I'll show you." So they gave me a court martial and I didn't have anybody to defend me __ I had a lot of confidence in, they said, "Well, there's nothing to it, I don't want to get involved, let's go home, war's over." So they gave me a court martial and they rapped me on the knuckles, fined me $20, and then I.
Holt: I tell you, there are so many stories from the various Montford Point Marines, from yourself, and I so appreciate you coming in. I want to talk more about the Association, I know that you're a member and there's a convention coming up, but we're going to have to leave the information on our website for our viewers, and you can find out more information about today's program and the Montford Point Marines if you visit us online at unctv.org/bif. You can also call us at (919) 549-7167 with your comments and suggestions. I'd like to thank Brigadier General Walls and also First Sergeant Carter for being with us today. Thank you for joining us.
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