It wouldn\u2019t be until he graduated high school and worked as an apprentice in the D.C. Navy Yard when he learned he could join too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019d be one of the first recruits in the camp\u2019s second year, when Marine legend and later Sgt. Maj. Gilbert \u201cHashmark\u201d Johnson led recruit training and black drill instructors replaced whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ivor Griffin went with his buddies to sign up for selective service. Many waited months to find out if they would be called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Griffin had four weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official lined the three up, told the first he was headed to the Army and the next he was headed to the Navy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pointed at Griffin: \u201cYou\u2019re in the Marine Corps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before Griffin left, his stepfather warned, \u201cWatch yourself, they\u2019re known to hang black men down there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Montford Point Marines, though fewer in number than Army and Navy counterparts, played an outsized role in the acceptance of blacks in the military, said Robert Jefferson Jr., a history professor at the University of New \u00adMexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In many ways, Jefferson said, black Marines got little recognition for their sacrifice, despite having proven themselves in bloody Pacific island battles. Some military leaders pointed to that service to later support future integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blacks had served in various capacities since the Revolutionary War. Entire units had fought in the Civil War and World War I. Despite these contributions, Jefferson said many isolated black communities away from military posts knew little about black military exploits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took political pressure from black leaders in the NAACP and other organizations for Roosevelt to issue 8802 at all, Jefferson said. And even that order was restricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quotas allowed no more than 10 percent black troops per unit, though numbers would never reaach that level during the war. And assignments kept most black troops in noncombat jobs such as cook, supply or steward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During World War II, black units \u00adreceived scant coverage in the major news outlets. But they were followed closely by the black press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of the coverage focused on the good job the Marines were doing overseas but didn\u2019t mention the discrimination or other problems minorities faced. The horrors of war were rarely reported either. Both angered many blacks, Jefferson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the men serving in those first waves of a segregated Marine Corps didn\u2019t note the history at the time, \u00addespite its later significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLittle did they realize they were setting a trend, a standard of excellence that the Marine Corps would embrace in the years to come,\u201d Jefferson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A hard reception<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Griffin, Manuel and Carpenter, now in their 90s, shared much of the same \u00adexperiences. As they arrived in North Carolina, they confronted segregated transportation, restaurants and bathrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They knew there were places they couldn\u2019t go when they left the camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men recalled downtown \u00adJacksonville, North Carolina, a village of less than 1,200, had perhaps three square blocks and was divided by railroad tracks. On one side were the white townspeople. On the other were a handful black families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, more than 67,000 people live in Jacksonville and 20 percent of them are black, according to Census data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In December 1942, nearly four months after the boot camp opened, the men got their first liberty and headed into town to celebrate and catch a ride to the nearest cities. Town merchants, startled by the sight of a hundred black Marines in green, shut their stores, the bus and train station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The camp commander called in \u00admilitary trucks to take the Marines where they needed to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Griffin, Carpenter and Manuel said they mostly bypassed white establishments, looking for juke joints run by black owners and getting meals from side windows or backdoors of restaurants, as was the rule at the time. But they couldn\u2019t avoid \u00adcolliding with fellow Marines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n White Marines barred blacks from leaving Montford Point on one occasion, Carpenter recalled. So, those who\u2019d been blocked at the gate went back, rounded up fellow black Marines, who took off their black leather, brass buckle belts and left the camp. Rolling brawls erupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But soon, Carpenter said attitudes among some white Marines stationed on nearby Camp Lejeune, changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carpenter was returning from leave and fell asleep in the white section. When the bus driver stopped and told him to get off, white Marines came to his defense, telling the driver to shut up and keep driving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When this happened to some of his friends, both white and black Marines would kick the driver from his own bus and drive it back to the gate themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first year the training cadre, commanders and support staff were white. But quickly Marine leaders identified promising new recruits and made them into \u201cacting Jacks\u201d to serve as drill instructors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Griffin\u2019s drill instructors was a private. Despite his rank, or perhaps because of it, he drove the recruits hard. The black drill instructors were tougher on them than the whites, because they wanted the recruits to be tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A heritage remains<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the Marines who are now charged with keeping the history and significance of Montford Point alive had little to no knowledge of its existence when they were in uniform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Montford Point Marine Association President Forest Spencer Jr. admitted he was a little embarrassed to not learn of the history until shortly before he retired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot a lot of information was passed on to active-duty Marines,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of that changed when former Commandant Gen. James Amos pushed for greater recognition of Montford Point Marines and black Marine history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everett Wills, a retired gunnery sergeant and association member, enlisted in 1976. Even then, nearly 35 years after Montford Point opened, Wills said there were few blacks serving as officers or in the senior enlisted ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only a few years before, in the late 1960s, large-scale riots and race-charged brawls between white and black Marines had led to stabbings, beatings and deaths at Lejeune, Okinawa and in Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1968, Headquarters Marine Corps began compiling briefs on race-related incidents in the Corps. The 2nd Marine Division commanding general created a committee to address the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n Through the years much of the tension subsided as blacks attained higher ranks, including generals and sergeants major of the Marine Corps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spencer said honoring the past, even if it was segregated, can help people appreciate the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSegregation is over, all Marines are forged through Parris Island, San Diego or Quantico,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cNow my objective is to quench this thirst of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With that, Wills and others are leading a multiyear research project to find all the names of each of the nearly 20,000 Marines trained at Montford Point. Many records were damaged or lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manuel would reach the rank of staff sergeant. He loved the Corps, but left after he started a family. Carpenter rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, helping modernize the Corps by installing one of the first mainframe computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Griffin left the Marines briefly after the war and his service in the Pacific but \u00adreturned and later fought in the Korean War and served aboard ships in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each of the three count their years in uniform as some of their most cherished, but they reflect on it in different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Griffin admits he faced a lot of discrimination both in and out of the Corps. He harbored resentment for many years. But in his ninth decade, that has dissipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a new era \u2014 that\u2019s all done now,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cI\u2019m a full man now. I\u2019m now whole and I don\u2019t hold \u00adprejudices against anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long gone but not forgotten is \u201c\u00adHashmark\u201d Johnson, one of the first black drill instructors to oversee training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He garnered the nickname \u201cHashmark\u201d because he had more service stripes, or hash marks, than chevrons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1974, two years after his death from a heart attack while speaking to \u00adMontford Point veterans at Camp Lejuene, Montford Point Camp was renamed Camp Gilbert H. Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before his passing, the hard-nosed former drill instructor reflected on what his men accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs I look into your faces tonight, I remember the youthful, and sometimes pained expressions at something I may have said \u2026 But I remember \u00adsomething you did. You measured up, by a slim margin perhaps, but measure up you did. You achieved your goal. That realization creates within me a warm appreciation of you and a deep sense of personal gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Montford Point Marines started 75 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":33781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":69,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3396],"class_list":["post-52216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-marine-corps"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"6P34YIVWRFCHTFWA7WQO7I4QS4","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2017\/08\/26\/first-black-marines-mark-75th-anniversary-of-the-segregated-boot-camp\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Montford_web.jpg.jpg\")