A separate war: Pioneering black Marines endured, prevailed

It was the dress blue uniforms that drew John Thompson to join the U.S. Marines, where black men were not welcome, so he could defend a country that denied him the rights he wanted to fight for.

“I said, ‘Wow, that’s a real pretty uniform,’” recalls Thompson, now 94.

It took President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 executive order banning discrimination in government and defense industry employment because of “race, creed, color, or national origin” to give the teenage son of black South Carolina sharecroppers a chance to serve as a Marine during World War II.

Just not alongside whites.

The first African Americans admitted to the Marine Corps after Roosevelt’s order were put in segregated units, starting with their training.

At a swampy, bug-infested camp called Montford Point, adjacent to but separate from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, they endured indignities — but they also paved the way for others who came after.

Thompson, who enlisted in 1943, was among them. The Marines were the only military branch for him, after he saw their uniforms on newsreels at the black theater where he sold popcorn and after two of his friends joined the Corps themselves.