It had been barely a month since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. American troops were arriving in Europe to engage with Allied forces in the fight against Adolf Hitler’s invasions. The United States needed its people to help win World War II. And yet, in January 1942, the highest ranking Marine officer, General Thomas Holcomb, expressed contempt for an effort to recruit more Marines – Black Marines – into the force.
Holcomb argued that African Americans seeking to enlist in the Marines “were trying to break into a club that didn’t want it.” Holcomb reiterated a complaint he made in April 1941, when he said, “If it was to have a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 negroes, I would rather have the whites.”
Despite Holcomb’s words, the call was made in June 1942 to enlist some 900 African-American men, aged 19 to 29, in the United States Marine Corps. The recruiting was in accordance with Executive Order 8802, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on June 25, 1941 to end discrimination in the US defense industry.
Ordinance 8802: A “ proclamation of the second emancipation ”
The ordinance established the Fair Employment Practices Commission, which mandated “full participation in the advocacy agenda of all people regardless of color, race, creed or national origin.” He also ordered “all government departments, including the armed forces” to “lead the way in removing discrimination based on color or race.”
Given its potential to equalize access to employment, Decree 8802 has been called the “second emancipation proclamation”. It came at a time when the country was struggling to assert anti-racist ideals at home, as it stepped up its commitment to fighting the Axis Powers during World War II.
Despite the hypocrisy of discriminating against black Americans at home when fighting a racist regime abroad, most members of the U.S. government were not interested in national equality. The FDR had only signed Decree 8802 after A. Philip Randolph, a leader of civil rights and the labor movement, lobbied.
A. Philip Randolph’s Campaign to End Discrimination
A. Philip Randolph.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Safety Administration / Office of War Information
Randolph, who founded the first union of black workers, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was a pioneer in recognizing that progress for African Americans would require progress in labor and civil rights. To these ends, in 1941, he began organizing a march on Washington to end employment discrimination in the defense industry. It gained momentum, with reports suggesting 50,000 to 100,000 people were expected.
A large demonstration posed an image problem for the Roosevelt administration. “They know the March on Washington movement is real, because the FBI tells them so,” Andrew Kersten, author of A. Philip Randolph: A Life at the Vanguard, said. The FBI was backing up the numbers by monitoring hotel, bus and train reservations.
Roosevelt “was concerned about the kind of public relations problem that racism in the United States posed to its foreign policy and diplomatic efforts during the war when faced with an openly racist regime in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.” », Explains Cornelius Bynum, author of A. Philip Randolph and the struggle for civil rights. “It seemed difficult to argue for US involvement in opposition to Nazi racial theory even as it discriminates against African Americans on such a universal scale.
To avoid this conflict, Roosevelt met with Randolph before the march to negotiate. Randolph agreed to cancel the protest and the president took a stand against labor discrimination in defense work. He signed Decree 8802, which affirms “that the democratic way of life within the Nation can only be successfully defended with the help and support of all groups within its borders”.
While there is no enforcement mechanism in the ordinance, it was nonetheless important, Bynum says, because it represented “the federal government’s commitment to economic justice, and how that becomes a platform. for continued action for civil rights, with regard to jobs and freedom.
First Black Marines trained at a separate facility
New recruits to the 51st Composite Battalion, US Marine Corps, obtaining equipment in March 1943.
Corbis / Getty Images
For thousands of African Americans, the impact of Executive Order 8802 was more than symbolic. In 1942, he led the first black recruits in the Marines. In The First Black Officer of the Marine Corps: The Life and Legacy of Frederick C. Branch, Judson Jeffries describes Executive Order 8802 as “significantly changing the racial demographics of the US military.”
The Marines established a new training facility for black recruits at Montford Point Base, NC that was separate and inferior to that of their white counterparts at Camp Lejeune, a few miles away. While Executive Order 8802 required Marines not to discriminate against black recruits, it did not end segregation.
In an interview in 2006, one of the revolutionary new recruits, LaSalle Vaughn, described his shock at the segregation and poor conditions of black interns upon arriving at Montford Point. “I walked through that door, and all I could see was nothing but black people,” he said. “Nothing but black, nothing but tents. No dining hall, no theater and all that stuff, that was supposed to be there.
READ MORE: Black Americans who served in World War II faced segregation abroad and at home
From 1942 to 1949, approximately 20,000 African Americans began their careers as Marines at Montford Point. By the end of the decade, President Harry S. Truman had signed Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the military, and Montford Point closed. Once again, it was Randolph who was instrumental in putting pressure on the executive to obtain the signing of this edict, which intersected labor and civil rights.
“Mr. President, black people are in the mood not to bear arms for the country unless Jim Crow in the military is abolished,” Randolph told Harry Truman, according to a 1968 oral history on file with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
Truman, sympathetic to the cause and aware of Randolph’s already legendary track record, asked in response, “Well, what do you want to do?”
