When Marine Col. Samuel A. Woods Jr. took command of the African-American troops assigned to the segregated training site at Montford Point on the New River in Onslow County, N.C., in 1942, he insisted that the black recruits receive “equal training” to all other Marines.
“Boot camp demanded constant activity,” Col. Woods said, “from learning Marine Corps’ discipline to mastering the use of hand-to-hand combat, rifles and bayonets.”
“I
have found that any soldier anywhere will respond to his duties if treated like
a human being. The same is true of the Negro Marines as of all other persons in
the service,” he said.
Col.
Woods chose an experienced, all-white staff of officers, non-commissioned
officers and drill instructors. All were veterans of service in places like the
Philippines, the Caribbean and Nicaragua, so it was reasoned they had
experience with “non-white personnel.”
The charge assigned Col. Woods and his staff was to quickly identify which black recruits had leadership potential to replace the original white drill instructors. This was accomplished by late 1943.
Freelance journalist Anna Hiatt interviewed Archibald Mosley, an original Montford Pointer, who said: “When we took over as weapons instructors and so forth, we (blacks) were worse on our own than the whites were on us when they were in charge.”
Joseph Henry Carpenter (shown below), who trained at Montford Point in 1943, agreed. He told Hiatt that
the black recruits were relieved when black drill instructors began to replace
the white ones, hopeful they wouldn’t be as tough. The opposite turned out to
be true.
“They,
the blacks, were determined to make us succeed and to be real Marines,”
Carpenter said. “And that was their main goal, to be sure that we were gonna be
better than everybody else.”
“Everybody else” included the white Marines who were stationed only a few miles away aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.
In a sense, “Civil rights were gained not in the name of liberty, but of war,” Hiatt opined.
Many
Montford Marines were deployed overseas to the Pacific theater during World War
II, essentially to perform “guard duty” on islands outside combat zones that
had already been secured – locations such as Ellice and the Mariana Islands,
the Marshall Islands and Guam.
Montford
Marines also constituted ammunition and depot companies that were responsible
for advancing ammunitions and supplies to front line combat troops who were
engaged with Japanese warfighters on islands such as Saipan, Peleliu, Okinawa
and Iwo Jima in 1944-45.
Hence, the Montford Pointers were thrust into heavy combat on some of the war’s bloodiest beaches.
“They became expert combat fighters and riflemen in the fire of battle,” according to an account published at the website MarineParents.com.
Sources say about 2,000 African-American Marines took part in the seizure of Okinawa.
Fighting in the Pacific came to an end on Aug. 14, 1945, when Japan agreed to unconditional surrender following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Writing for the Warfare History Network, Stephen D. Lutz said: “Although they had been segregated, abused, disrespected, discriminated against and used as common laborers because they were thought to be incapable of combat, the black Marines proved otherwise.”
“They had broken the long-standing military color barrier, and life in the Marine Corps – and throughout the rest of the U.S. armed forces – would never be the same. African-American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen would distinguish themselves in all of America’s upcoming wars,” Lutz said.
Although there were no black Marines in the famous photo of the U.S. flag being hoisted above Iwo Jima, “their fingerprints were on the pole,” Lutz stated. “And they will always be there.”
Montford Pointers made America a better place
Two of the Marines cited in the above article would surface again in later years. Here is a brief summary of their contributions to society.
Archibald Mosley
After his military service in the Marine Corps, Archibald Mosley of Carbondale, Ill., earned multiple degrees in theology and education, including his doctorate in communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
The Rev. Dr. Archibald Mosley became a pastor with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and served
as a presiding elder.
He and his wife, Jerolene Thomas Mosley, raised four daughters.
Rev. Dr. Mosley served many
years as a public school superintendent and city administrator. He was also
recognized for his role in higher education as a professor and dean at Shaw
College in Detroit, Mich.
He died in 2020, at age 95.
Joseph Henry Carpenter
Joseph
Henry Carpenter of Washington, D.C., enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1943, along
with thousands of other African-Americans and completed basic training at the
segregated boot camp at Montford Point near Jacksonville, N.C.
He was promoted to chief clerk in 1945 and became the first African-American to be assigned duty at the U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Va.
Carpenter separated from the military in 1949 and worked as a civil servant in various government positions.
In 1966, after briefly attending George Washington University, he re-entered the Marine Corps and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was deployed during peacekeeping operations to Norway, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Vietnam.
Continuing to serve in data processing and other staff and clerical positions throughout his career, Carpenter rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring in 1986.
He died in 2021 at age 96.
In 1965, Carpenter was a founding member of the National Montford Point Marines Association, which was established to reunite veterans and active-duty Marines Corps personnel who trained at Montford Point between 1942 and 1949.
Carpenter was also a
founding member of the Montford Point Marines Museum.
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