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WILLIAM “JACK” McDOWELL (FIRST SERGEANT, RETIRED, U.S. MARINES): This is mine, that was awarded to me. I wear it like that. That’s my Congressional Gold Medal. Kind of heavy, you know.
NARRATION: When First Sergeant Jack McDowell accepted his Congressional Gold Medal …
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-27-12):
ANNOUNCER: Mr. William McDowell, representative of the Montford Point Marines…
NARRATION: …he was representing a special group of World War II veterans, America’s first Black Marines.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-27-12):
JACK McDOWELL: I don’t think we imagined that anything like this would ever happen in our lifetime.
JACK McDOWELL: There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd and you heard grown men in their 80s and 90s saying, this is the best day of my life.
NARRATION: For men like the Montford Point Marines, World War II wasn’t only about fighting overseas. It was also about a fight here at home.
ARCHIVAL (RADIO ADDRESS, 12-9-41):
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: We must have more ships, more guns, more planes, more of everything. We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
NARRATION: In the early 1940s, as the United States prepared to join the war, Black Americans were kept out of lucrative factory jobs. They were denied combat roles in the Army and Navy, which were fully segregated, and could not join the Marine Corps at all.
JACK McDOWELL: The conventional wisdom at the time was that African Americans won’t fight, thinking that we didn’t have enough intelligence – smarts – to understand orders. You know, we’re typically, because of our race, ignorant people with no talent.
Thomas Holcomb was a commandant of the United States Marine Corps. He was famous for saying if it came to 250,000 African Americans or 5,000 whites, he would take the 5,000 whites.
NARRATION: But many Black Americans were angry about being shut out of the war preparations. President Franklin Roosevelt reluctantly met with labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who asked him to open defense jobs and military combat roles to Black Americans.
ARCHIVAL (AUDIO RECORDING, 9-27-40):
A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH (SPEAKING TO PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT): Negro people . . . feel they have earned the right to participate in every phase of the government.
NARRATION: Roosevelt failed to meet his demands, so Randolph began organizing a 100,000-man march on Washington. This did not sit well with the president.
ARCHIVAL (1991):
A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH: The president – he said we can’t have 100,000 Negroes marching on Washington. If anything such as that were to occur, you wouldn’t be able to manage them. He said, now, let us get down to business here and find out what can be done.
NARRATION: Randolph called off the march, and in exchange the president created Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in the defense industries.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Pearl Harbor
ARCHIVAL (NEWSREEL):
ANNOUNCER: December 7, 1941…
NARRATION: Suddenly, America was at war. And the limited openings for Black soldiers in segregated military units were quickly filled.
MATTHEW DELMONT (HISTORIAN, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE): After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, thousands of Black Americans go to recruiting officers all across the country to try to volunteer their service. Dozens of those Black Americans are turned away at the recruiting offices, though, and they’re just left dumbstruck by this. In many cases the military turned away Black volunteers who had advanced degrees from Harvard, who had language capabilities, who had scientific backgrounds, only because of the color of their skin.
NARRATION: Many of those who enlisted were sent for training on bases in the segregated South.
MATTHEW DELMONT: The kind of racism and violence they encountered, both on base and off base, was horrendous. Black soldiers were writing letters to the N.A.A.C.P. saying, we’re being treated like slaves. We’re being treated like dogs down here. And they literally feared for their lives.
NARRATION: A few weeks into the war, 26-year-old James Thompson wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most influential Black newspapers, asking, “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?”
The Courier used the letter to launch what it called the Double V Campaign.
CAROL ANDERSON (HISTORIAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY): The Double V Campaign was victory against fascists overseas and here in the United States. It was going after the ideology of white supremacy that had propped up Nazi Germany, and that had also propped up Jim Crow here in the U.S.
You think about the depth of patriotism that it takes to put your life on the line for a nation that does not believe that you should have the right to vote. Black folks were making the connection that this war for freedom wasn’t just a war for freedom over there, it was for freedom here as well.
ARCHIVAL (SONG):
LYRICS: Call our boys from east to west
Come on boys and let’s do our best
For I’m American
Praise the Lord
We are America
Praise the Lord
Praise His holy name
NARRATION: Under pressure from President Roosevelt, in 1942, the Marine Corps finally began accepting Black recruits who were sent to a segregated camp at Montford Point, North Carolina.
JACK McDOWELL (LEAFING THROUGH A BOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHS): All these guys are my very good friends. Most of them are all gone now. Recruit training. Here’s obstacle courses, swim training – everybody had to learn how to swim. Of course there were no Black officers. You could have a doctorate degree and you couldn’t become an officer in the Marine Corps.
NARRATION: Even after deployment to the Pacific, where they fought in pivotal battles like Okinawa, they were segregated into non-combat roles.
JACK McDOWELL: We were assigned to an outfit called the 38th field depot company.
JACK McDOWELL (POINTING TO A PHOTO): Just a shot of the beach. It was responsible for handling all of the supplies and equipment and facilities in different points around the island. We’re always in support roles. We were segregated because of race. In order to be in the infantry units, that would put you too close to working with the whites. Doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the way racial segregation worked in the United States Marine Corps.
ARCHIVAL (NEWSREEL, 1945):
ANNOUNCER: Here’s the answer to the propaganda of the Japs and Nazis. Here’s the answer: Wings for this man. Wings for these Americans.
NARRATION: Other branches also created new, all-Black units, including the now famous Tuskegee Airmen and tank battalions like the Black Panthers, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
MATTHEW DELMONT: They were starting to awaken white military leaders to the reality that Black Americans could participate bravely in combat operations.
ARCHIVAL (NEWSREEL, 1945):
ANNOUNCER: These tankers were out in front, four days on the Ninth United States Army’s push to the Rhine.
JACK McDOWELL: When the chips were down and they had to pick up their weapons and fight, they did that. People began to change their minds about these colored Marine guys – you know, they’re not so bad after all.
ARCHIVAL (1945):
ANNOUNCER: The greatest, wildest celebration of them all was in New York’s Times Square. …Victory had come…Old Glory waved over a happy land.
MATTHEW DELMONT: White veterans come back to the country and they’re feted with parades and victory rallies.
ARCHIVAL (1945):
ANNOUNCER: The march of the troops…the Army..
MATTHEW DELMONT: They’re rewarded for their service with the G.I. Bill. But for Black Americans, the story is different.
JACK McDOWELL: When I came back from overseas I arrived to New York. There was no hero’s welcome, there was no big parade, you know. No big deal. Nothing like that. Took the subway home, rang the doorbell. That was my big welcome home, my sister and my mother, you know.
NARRATION: Despite their service, Black veterans returned to a country whose views of race had changed very little.
MATTHEW DELMONT: There were at least a dozen cases of Black veterans being attacked, some wearing their military uniforms, in part because a lot of white Americans recognized that Black Americans weren’t going to stand for second-class citizenship any more, and they were seen as a threat for that reason.
NARRATION: President Harry Truman was outraged by the violent attacks on Black veterans . . .
ARCHIVAL:
PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN: I had to take the next step, so I took it.
NARRATION: . . . and in 1948 integrated the military by executive order.
ARCHIVAL (7-26-48):
PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN: There shall be equality of treatment and opportunities for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, creed, or color or national origin.
NARRATION: Jack McDowell served for 23 years and saw a lot of change.
JACK MCDOWELL (POINTING TO A PHOTO): That was in Korea,1950, after racial integration really began, when I took over this group of 28 white guys. This was in Vietnam in 1967.
NARRATION: And while he’s proud of the change integration brought to the military, he still wants Americans to know the real story of the Black veterans who served in World War II.
JACK McDOWELL: I’d see movies about World War II and I never saw any Black people in any of those movies, and I never saw any Black people in the news reel. I don’t think it dawned on the storytellers at that time that it was important to show the contribution made by Black folks. If you don’t see it, then you can’t learn anything from it. I want people to know that we did our part and we did it well. You can’t take that away from us.
(END)