HAVELOCK — Retired Marine Master Sgt. Johnnie Thompkins remembers when he decided he wanted to join the Marine Corps as a young man growing up in Winston-Salem.
“I was shining shoes on the street corner,” said Thompkins, who now lives in New Bern.
A group of Marines came up and he heard them talking about the Corps.
“These guys were all about it. I said, ‘This is for me.’ I said ‘I wanted to join the Marine Corps because they were the baddest people out there,’ ” Thompkins said.
So he joined and found out just how bad they were.
“Those boys are too tough,” he said. “I don’t know how long I’m going to stay here, and they said, ‘You’ve signed the papers. You’re going to stay here forever.’ ”
Thompkins, 85, an original member of the Montford Point Marines, attended a special ceremony honoring the first African-Americans to join the Marine Corps Friday at Cherry Point. The Montford Point Marine Association sponsored the event, which was held at the base theater.
When Thompkins was introduced, the entire crowd stood up to clap and offer their respect.
Thompkins said it wasn’t always that way though for young black Marines.
“They told me I had to sit in the back of the bus,” he said. “We were breaking in then.”
He was one of 19,000 that ultimately went through Montford Point, the Marine Corps’ boot camp for African-Americans from 1942 to 1949.
Sgt. Maj. Christopher Robinson, sergeant major for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point, was the keynote speaker for the event.
“Words cannot truly capture what these men endured,” Robinson said. “They’ve established a sense of sacrifice and duty that continues even today in the thousands of African-American Marines who serve and wear the eagle, globe and anchor with pride and dignity, honor, courage and commitment.”
Robinson said he knew little about the Montford Point Marines until his tour as sergeant major for the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training at Cherry Point in 2006.
“They were never included in any lessons I sat through as a recruit back in boot camp, nor were they part of any lesson I taught as a drill instructor when at Parris Island as a DI back in those days, or even ever mentioned in any of the PME courses that I’ve attended throughout my time in the Marine Corps,” Robinson said. “But I know who they are now, and I will tell you that they are ordinary men who were faced with extraordinary circumstances at a time when the Marine Corps was the only branch of service that refused to enlist African-Americans. Throughout the struggle came a unique group of men who hold a very special place in the Marine Corps and also in our nation’s history.”
Robinson told of how in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission which opened military services, in particular the Marine Corps, to blacks.
“These men came from all walks of life and they all came for different reasons, but the common denominator is they wanted to serve their country. They wanted to do it honorably. They wanted to do it as a Marine,” Robinson said.
He said many faced discrimination and segregation, including arrests by police for impersonating Marines.
“Surprisingly, many of the Jacksonville police officers had never seen a black Marine, yet, they trained in an uninhabited wooded area in the very city the policemen protected,” Robinson said. “Others had discovered that certain levels of discrimination went away when they wore the Marine Corps uniform. But when a white Marine stood by their side to get a seat on the bus, or even a meal at a restaurant, they all had one thing in common. That was their entry point in the Marine Corps. They all came through Montford Point.
“It was a beginning, for all African-Americans wearing this uniform today, and I will tell you, it was hard.”
Robinson said that though blacks and whites were trained separately during World War II, they came together on the battlefield.
“Their courage under fire and fidelity for their fellow Marines, regardless of skin color began to erode the false Jim Crow generational stereotypes that blacks could not, would not fight when faced with danger,” he said. “It was through their first-hand experiences being side by side in a fighting hole, their hardships, blood, sweat and tears, where white Marines and black Marines became green Marines. The conditions forced these men to recognize their similarities rather than their differences. At the end of the day, they were fighting the country, for a common cause and for each other.”
In 2012, the surviving Montford Point Marines, most of them in their 80s, were the recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award in the country.
In March, the USNS Montford Point, a lead ship of a class of Mobile Landing Platform ships, will be christened and delivered to the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command.