On the recordOctober 25, 2011
Today we gather to honor the sacrifice and patriotism of the Montford Point Marines with Congress's highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal. The Montford Point Marines were this Nation's first class of African- American Marine recruits. As was often the case during the Jim Crow Era, being the first African-Americans to break the color barriers resulted in a whole new set of hardships. Montford Point Marines suffered from the start. Not only were they not allowed to train at Camp Lejeune with their white colleagues, the Commandant, the Marine's highest ranking officer said publicly that if he had to choose between 250,000 African-American Marines and 5,000 whites, he would rather have the whites. Training along the North Carolina coast, they endured inferior conditions and trained with inferior equipment dodging snakes and malaria-infected mosquitoes in summer and risking exposure from the bitter cold in winter as they passed the nights in huts made of cardboard. Fueled by a fierce determination to answer the call to arms in their Nation's hour of need, the Montford Point Marines endured these hardships and joined the fight in Okinawa, where their courage and bravery were celebrated. When the war ended, they returned home to silence, abuse and indifference and were soon forgotten. That is, until today.…
