101-year-old Butler Martin is among the last surviving Montford Point Marines
Butler Martin's photos from his time as a Montford Point Marine are peppered throughout a booklet from a commemorative ceremony held in the nation's capital more than a decade ago.
A Congressional Gold Medal — the highest civilian award — from that event sits on display in his living room, alongside a black and white picture of the 101-year-old as a young Marine in uniform.
Martin is one of the last known surviving members of the Montford Point Marines, the first African American men to enlist in the Marine Corps after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order banning job discrimination in the defense industry — a move that allowed African Americans to join all branches of the military after the start of World War II. Up until that point in June 1941, African Americans were barred from serving in the Marine Corps since its founding in 1775.
It was 1942 when Martin began his journey in the Marine Corps. He initially intended to join the Air Corps but wasn't able to because he didn't have an associate's degree, he recalled in an interview in his Inkster home. He had heard there were no Black units in the Marine or Air Corps, and wanted to be a part of changing that.
"We helped break the barrier," Martin said.
Coping with segregation
Martin trained at Montford Point, a segregated site for African American recruits at Camp Lejeune military base in North Carolina. He had to sleep in tents with oil heaters, he recalled. Dilapidated huts served as barracks, and the Marines were forced to build their own facilities on camp, according to the booklet from the Congressional Gold Medal commemorative ceremony. Black recruits were trained harder to prove they were just as capable as their white counterparts, he said.
"They were a lot rougher on us," he said.
Martin said he had to be careful outside of camp during that time, too, when racial segregation and discrimination ran rampant in the South. When they went into town, the recruits had to stick together and could visit only Black bars, restaurants and cafes.
"We couldn't go nowhere in the white neighborhoods. ... You went into town, they got a white fountain that you drink water out of and a black fountain. They got signs up — 'white only' and then they got another sign for Blacks," he said.
Martin remembers during a train trip to California in 1943 when restaurants in New Orleans denied service to the 500 Marines in his group because they were Black.
"The Marine commander got buses to take us to the Black side of town and found every restaurant they could find to feed us," he said.
From Hamtramck to the Pacific theater
Martin was deployed to the Pearl Harbor naval base, Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Guam. Martin was responsible for supplying ammunition.
"We had to handle a lot of ammunition. It was real dangerous," he said.
On the battlefield, Black and white Marines fought side-by-side, but afterward the Marines separated to their segregated camps, with their own huts, kitchens and mess halls.
Martin served in the Marines until 1946. He had enlisted for the duration of the war and decided to leave after it ended.
Martin was born in South Carolina and raised in Hamtramck, in a house with Polish neighbors who lived upstairs. After he left the Marines, Martin worked as a Detroit bus driver for a decade. Then, he went to cosmetology school and opened up his own shop — Mr. Martin's Salon in Detroit — which he ran for nearly 40 years, making toupees for men and styling women's hair. He retired in 1990. One of Martin's children followed in his footsteps and joined the Marines.
Martin also paved the way for Marines like Ramon B. Rogers, a veteran who now serves as vice commandant of the Detroit-based nonprofit Montford Point Marines of America.
"Obstacle after obstacle, these gentlemen overcame and continued to be treated as second-class citizens in that they had to fight for the right to fight for their own country," Rogers told the Free Press.
Rogers said if the Montford Point Marines had given up along the way, he would not have seen his own military success, let alone been allowed in the Marines in the first place.
'Forgotten Warriors' ... 'were set up to fail'
On Friday, Rogers spoke during a Memorial Day ceremony held by the city of Southfield at which Martin was honored for his service.
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As African Americans, the Montford Point Marines were underestimated yet they persisted, Rogers said. Instead of going to traditional camps at Parris Island, South Carolina, and San Diego, they were relegated to a separate site, forced to train in the backwoods, he said. Recruits dealt with snakes, swarms of mosquitoes and a lack of fresh running water. It was uninhabitable for humans, Rogers said.
The Montford Point Marines, or the "Forgotten Warriors," were given menial tasks, not allowed in combat roles and denied promotions for their achievements, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"These individual men, they were set up to fail. ... Yet these Black men were committed to becoming a United States Marine," Rogers said.
About 20,000 African Americans trained at Montford Point. More than 12,700 were deployed overseas. There are approximately 200 surviving Montford Point Marines in the U.S., according to a press release from the city of Southfield.
Martin, in a black Montford Point Marines cap, sat with his wife, Anna, on Friday as he received his honorary plaque from the Southfield Veteran's Commission.
"The Black Marines made a difference," he told the Free Press.
Contact Nushrat Rahman: nrahman@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @NushratR.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Butler Martin, 101, is one of the first African American Marines
