WWII Marine vet George T. Brown awarded Congressional Gold Medal

Early on during World War II, George T. Brown wanted to join the Marines to help his country.

However, he was not sent to Parris Island, South Carolina, where Marines traditionally went through boot camp. Instead, Brown was sent to a separate, segregated camp for African Americans in North Carolina.

He was among the first Black Marines in the nation, trailblazers who helped open the door to eventually desegregating the storied military branch.

On Thursday, Brown was honored posthumously at Hempstead High School, where he served as dean of students for years, with part of the campus named after him.

His two daughters attended the ceremony and received a Congressional Gold Medal in his honor.

'American Patriot'

Brown “was an American patriot. He was part of American history,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said at the ceremony in the school auditorium, filled with students, community leaders and military officials.

Some 20,000 Black Marines passed through North Carolina's Montford Point Camp from August 1942, when it opened, until 1949 when the Marine Corps was desegregated under orders from President Harry Truman, according to leaders of the National Montford Point Marine Association.

The Marines had not accepted Black recruits since the days of the American Revolution, but finally reversed the practice during World War II — albeit with Black service members in separate units.

The Montford Association has spent years trying to track down often overlooked graduates of the camp or their relatives to receive the Congressional Medal.

“They were never honored for their service," said Walter Wells, a leader of the association. “We are trying to keep the legacy of these Marines alive so people don’t ever forget."

Black Marines served in some of the most famous and brutal battles of World War II, including Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, said Jose A. Trujillo Jr., another leader of the association.

Brown grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and was 17 when he decided to enter the military in 1942. He had a choice, Brown's daughters said, the Army or the Marines.

Tough conditions

When he got to Montford Point Camp in August 1942, it wasn't easy, said his daughter, Bimini Hayes of Lakeview.

There were no barracks, so they had to build their own, she said.

At one point, a drill instructor who was angry with the men woke them up in the middle of the night, marched them to the sea, and made them jump in — amid a winter chill, said another daughter, Olga Brown Young of Hempstead. It was so cold, she said her father would recall, his clothes, and those of the other recruits, froze when they emerged from the water.

“He did not talk about it very much, but we both knew that it was very tough" serving in the all-Black Marines unit, Hayes said.

After he finished serving, Brown attended Tuskegee University in Alabama, where he earned a degree in education, and met his future wife, classmate Dorothy Cole Brown, his family said. After graduation, they moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he landed a job as an industrial arts teacher in a public school.

One day he approached the principal and told him he wanted to move into administration. The principal, using a racist term, told Brown that would never happen because of the color of his skin, his daughters said.

So he moved up north, to Long Island, where he thought he would have more opportunities. Brown landed in Hempstead, went to work in the public schools as a teacher, and eventually was made dean of students at the high school —  among the first, if not the first, Black person on Long Island to hold such a post, his family said.

Brown worked in the district from 1963 to 1990. He died seven years ago at age 91.

Hayes said that all these years later, former students from the schools still come up to her and talk about her father's impact on them.

“To this day I bump into people who knew my dad and talk about how integral he was in their success," she said. 

Naming part of the high school after him is a “huge honor. I think that my father touched many, many lives here," she said.