10961: BHM 2013—Marines.

The Montford Point Marines get a second tour of duty, as the BHM campaign is recycled for 2013.

9837: BHM 2012—Marines.

The Marines salute their own for Black History Month. The Montford Point Marines were the first Blacks to serve in the Marine Corps, changing the face of the United States Marine Corps forever.

9779: BHM 2012—WWW.

Black History Month presents patronizing via social media. Ronald McDonald woos with 365Black® while Colonel Sanders counters with KFC360º. AT&T parties for 28 Days and Allstate pushes its Beyond February Program. The Few and The Proud salute Montford Point Marines while American Airlines flies with BlackAtlas. Verizon is Celebrating Your Story as Procter & Gamble proclaims My Black Is Beautiful, a copycat effort that inspired more copycats like Pepsi We Inspire and Pine-Sol Powerful Women. Not sure whatever happened to the Budweiser Great Kings and Queens of Africa.

9498: Saluting The Montford Point Marines.

From The Los Angeles Times..

Marines honor African Americans who enlisted amid segregation

On the Marine Corps’ 236th anniversary, a small gathering of black veterans, who trained and served in a segregated force in the 1940s, attend a ceremony at Camp Pendleton.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Camp Pendleton, Calif.—On a day that marked its 236th anniversary, the Marine Corps sought Thursday to atone for a failure to fully honor some of its own — the African Americans who enlisted amid the racial segregation of the 1940s.

“You showed great courage,” Col. Christopher Dowling told a small gathering of veterans who had trained at a segregated boot camp at Montford Point, N.C. Those who came out of Montford Point served in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II and also in Korea.

“You went into the Marine Corps,” Dowling said, “when the Marine Corps was not ready to accept you.”

In a ceremony atop a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a plaque remembering the Montford Point Marines was installed along the course of the Crucible — that 54-hour gut-check where recruits of all races are pushed to their physical and emotional limits.

Other plaques tell of Medal of Honor recipients and historic battles. When recruits march past, drill instructors lecture them on the stories of bravery and issue a challenge to “live up to the legacy.”

From 1942 to 1949, an estimated 19,000 African Americans went to the Montford Point boot camp, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where whites were assigned. After leaving Montford Point, the black troops largely were assigned to racially segregated battalions.

And this year, more than six decades after President Truman ordered racial integration of the U.S. military, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos ordered that the Montford Point Marines and their legacy be given a long overdue honor.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” said Robert Reid, 81, who attended boot camp at Montford Point, served in Korea and Vietnam, and retired as a master gunnery sergeant.

Reid was among seven original Montford Point Marines to attend Thursday’s ceremony. Other members of the Montford Point Marine Assn., who served in more recent decades and trained at boot camps at San Diego or Parris Island, S.C., also were in attendance.

After World War II, most African Americans were discharged from the Marine Corps. “They threw you guys under the rug,” Reid told the group.

Navy chaplain Lt. Sam Contreras, in his invocation, asked God to “forgive us how we forgot the memory of the Montford Point Marines.”

Dowling, commanding officer of the Weapons and Field Training Battalion, noted that the day and place were ideal for the Marine Corps “to get it right.” Thursday was one of the few times when the service’s birthday celebration has coincided with recruits having just finished the Crucible. It was also the eve of Veterans Day.

As the Montford Point Marines watched, several hundred recruits — exhausted and dirty — received the Eagle, Globe and Anchor and, for the first time, were called Marines.

Later, at the unveiling of the plaque, the Montford Point veterans were praised for helping the Marine Corps realize that courage, not race, is the defining characteristic of a good Marine.

“You were ahead of the greats” of the civil rights movement, Dowling said. “And for that, we thank you very much. Your legacy has made our corps greater.”

There were expressions of individual gratitude as well.

“Thank you,” Sgt. Major Trevor Jackson, a black Marine, told the veterans. “Without you, there would be no me.”

9385: Marines Pride.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Marine recruiters reach out at gay pride event in Pasadena

The Marines set up a booth at San Gabriel Valley Pride’s Community Unity Day at Pasadena City College. They were the only military branch to attend.

By Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times

Marine Corps recruiters at the San Gabriel Valley Pride event at Pasadena City College on Saturday didn’t care whether the young men who lined up to test their strength were gay or straight.

The Marines just wanted to see some pull-ups done properly: Place hands about shoulder width apart, palms facing away; pull upward until chin is over the bar and then slowly return to the hanging position. Repeat until the feet feel like concrete blocks and the biceps like rubber bands about to snap.

Addison Arce, 23, a slight, sinewy man who ran cross-country at Burbank High School, impressed them with 13 brisk pull-ups. “I’ve always been fond of the military and what they do,” said Arce, who described himself as bisexual. “I’ve thought about joining. Whether it would be the Marines, the Navy or Coast Guard, I’m not sure.” These Marines, he added, “they really know how to put on a show.”

With the official repeal last month of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the Marine Corps, the service that was most opposed to ending the policy, appears to be leading the charge into new recruitment territory.

The end of the hush-hush era opens up another qualified pool of applicants, said Sgt. Monique Wallace, marketing and public affairs representative for the Marine Corps’ Recruiting Station Los Angeles.

Carlos Ramirez, a board member of San Gabriel Valley Pride, said he believed that his group’s Community Unity Day was the first Southern California pride event to host military recruitment. San Gabriel Valley Pride is a nonprofit group dedicated to raising awareness about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture. Other pride groups in the region, Ramirez said, had held events before Sept. 20, the formal end of the military’s 17-year policy that barred gay men and women from serving openly in the military.

Whether the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” will open recruitment floodgates remains to be seen. As soon as the policy was repealed last month, a top Marine recruiting trainer for the Southwest showed up at the biggest gay community center in Tulsa, Okla., bracing for insults and protests. Instead, he conversed quietly with a trickle of gay women who wandered in to ask about joining the Marines.

At Pasadena City College on Saturday, Wallace was among eight Marines at the recruitment booth. From the morning opening, the Marine contingent proved the biggest draw amid tables representing healthcare organizations, church groups and vendors of rainbow-colored garden decorations. It might have helped that the Marines handed out a lanyard, a pen or a sticker to each man who tried to do a pull-up, or to each woman who tried the flexed-arm hang. To the rare volunteer capable of performing 20 pull-ups went a navy-blue T-shirt.

Darius Clash, 19, a Pasadena City College student from Altadena, made it through 19 pull-ups with seeming ease. He had recently visited the recruitment office near campus to ask about enlisting but “I chickened out a little bit,” he said. He’s weighing his desire to be a film director against what he sees as a need for the sort of discipline he could get from the military. Clash, who said he is heterosexual, said it would not bother him to serve with gay or lesbian recruits.

The Marine recruiters — outfitted in dress blue uniforms with short-sleeve shirts or camouflage pants and T-shirts — offered encouragement to anyone willing to take the challenge.

“Don’t stop, just one more,” one young recruiter with bulging biceps said to a man who nonetheless dropped to the ground, looking exhausted.

“Just 30 more seconds,” another recruiter called to a young woman attempting to hold her weight up with the flexed-arm hang.

Alan Chan, San Gabriel Valley Pride’s secretary, invited military personnel in the Pasadena recruitment office across from the college to set up booths at the event. The Navy, he said, did not have adequate staffing. The Army had previously committed to another event. The Air Force did not respond. And the Marines, who alone expressed interest, nearly had to plead poverty because the branch had exhausted its funds for the fiscal year and did not have $150 for the exhibitor fee. LA/Valley Pride covered the fee, said Executive Director Paul Waters.

Pride activists found it intriguing that the Marines were the only ones to show, given how adamantly their commandant had opposed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Last December, Gen. James Amos warned that the distraction of repealing the policy could lead to risks for combat units, among other issues. But after President Obama signed the repeal into law, Amos vowed to help lead the effort and said the Marines would do the best job of implementing the change.

Tom Carpenter, a former Marine fighter pilot and a member of the board of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said he was impressed “Marines are leading the charge.” He said the move would improve the pool of candidates strained by two wars.

“They had tens of thousands of felony waivers, and they were taking people convicted of drug use,” Carpenter said. “This will increase the pool of people available and allow people who want to serve the country to join.”

Carpenter said he resigned his active-duty commission as a captain in 1976 because of a ban on gays in the military. “I couldn’t live a lie,” said Carpenter, now a lawyer. Because he resigned, he gets no retirement pay. Through Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, he has helped keep people who were affected by “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military. “We’ve saved a lot of careers over the last 17 years,” he said.

8904: G.I. Jane Makes General.

From The New York Post…

Historic Marine base gets 1st female general

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. — For the first time in its 96-year history, a female general is taking charge at the famed Marine Corps training depot at South Carolina’s Parris Island.

Brig. Gen. Loretta Reynolds, who is also known as the first female Marine to ever hold a command position in a battle zone, takes charge Friday at the installation south of Beaufort.

Parris Island graduates about 20,000 Marines annually and is the only site where female enlisted Marines are trained to enter the service.

Reynolds is a native of Baltimore and a 1986 graduate of the Naval Academy. She has worn the Marine Corps uniform for 25 years.

She is taking over from Brig. Gen. Frederick Padilla, who is taking charge of the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, Japan.

In her new position, Reynolds also will be in charge of the Marines’ Eastern Recruiting Region, which covers the 23 states east of the Mississippi River.

As a one-star general, Reynolds becomes only the third female general officer in the more than 200,000-member Marine Corps. The service has two two-star female generals, one in the active duty ranks and another in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Overall, there are 12,339 enlisted females in the Marines, 108 warrant officers and 1,224 officers, according to Marine Corps figures. On its Parris Island website, the service said training for men and women is identical, and that roughly 2,400 female recruits go through it every year.

Reynolds trained as a communications officer and commanded Marines from platoon to battalion levels in her more than 20 years in uniform.

She has been posted in Okinawa, Japan; Quantico, Va., Iraq and Afghanistan, and was in command of the Marine Recruiting Station in Harrisburg, Pa.

She also worked with at the headquarters of the Marine Corps in its communications and computer division in Washington, D.C.

Reynolds’ last posting was in charge of the Headquarters Group for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

While serving a yearlong tour of duty in Afghanistan, she oversaw five Marine battalions and military company from Bahrain. While there, she took a base that had “fed, housed and equipped more than 10,000 Marines and expanded the base to handle an additional 10,000 Marines and sailors,” the website for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said. The site added that the command slot position meant she was “recognized as the first female Marine to command battle space.”

Before her time at Camp Pendleton, Reynolds was a division chief with the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Reynolds also has attended the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va., the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.

8461: BHM 2011—The U.S. Marines, Again.

The U.S. Marines re-launch this BHM ad every year.

8450: BHM 2011—The U.S. Marines.

This BHM ad is becoming Black history, as the Marines have been annually running it forever.

7494: BHM 2010—Marines.

How many years in a row will the Marines launch this BHM ad?