Houstonian celebrated for breaking barriers as one of first Black Marines
The men stood in rapt formation and called Cpl. Arthur Jackson to attention for perhaps the first time since he left the U.S. Marine Corps 75 years ago.
Bemused, the 99-year old man stepped to his feet and walked across the lawn of his daughter’s house in Spring to the three waiting Marines.
He may be aged and bald now, but he’s just as lean as when he joined the Marines as a 19-yearold in 1942. He stood quietly as they recognized his role as one of the first Black Marines in America and received a replica Congressional Gold Medal awarded to all “Montford Point Marines” by President Barack Obama in 2012.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “It's something I'm proud of.”
Jackson, who turned 99 last week, was born in Bellville and grew up in Houston’s Studewood neighborhood.
In 1942, with the world at war, Jackson signed up to fight. He had a brother in the Navy and another in the Air Force. He chose the U.S. Marine Corps.
His decision came a year after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order banning discrimination because of “race, creed, color or national origin” in government agencies, including the armed services.
Black men had served in other branches with distinction for
generations, but the Marines had barred their enlistment when they were officially reinstituted in 1798.
With Roosevelt’s order, the Marine Corps began signing up Black recruits, sending them to a barren piece of land near Jacksonville, N.C., that they turned into a segregated base called Camp Montford Point.
Jackson was among the first waves of some 19,000 men who would become known as the Montford Point Marines.
They “endured every form of racial discrimination” while serving their country, wrote Melton McLaurin, in a book dedicated to the history of the group. They were relegated to segregated train cars and the back row of buses. Restaurants denied them services, and white officers abused them.
Thousands of Black recruits made it through training, many under the direction of Gilbert “Hashmark” Johnson, a legendary drill instructor — and one of the first Black drill instructors in the Marine Corps — who spent more than 30 years in the armed forces.
Jackson deployed to the Pacific for about a year at the end of the war, one of tens of thousands of troops sent to oversee the surrender of Japan.
In early 1946, Jackson mustered out of the military and returned to Houston and to his wife, Horese White. He got a job carrying mail at the U.S. Postal Service, where he would work for four decades. In 1958, he and Horese settled in Pleasantville in east Houston, one of the first African American masterplanned communities in America.
The couple raised five children in the house where Jackson still lives, filled with flowers and love.
After almost a century of living, Jackson is a man of few words and his memory is sometimes foggy.
But he lights up talking about his children.
He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School, but life got in the way before he could go to college.
Not his children, though, he said, a smile creeping across his face during a recent interview.
“One thing I’m proud of,” he said, “they all went to college.”
Two sons, Charles and Weldon Jackson, served in the military. A daughter, Carol Washington, earned a Ph.D. and worked as a dean at Brandeis University. Elaine Williams became a nurse, and her fraternal twin, Dwayne Jackson, became a mechanical engineer.
Nearly eight decades after Jackson’s military service ended, Marine Corps Maj. Courtney Boston serves as commanding officer of the Corps’ recruiting efforts in Southeast Texas, an area that spans from College Station to Lufkin and Beaumont down along the Gulf Coast.
In Jackson, he sees a man who paved the way for other African American servicemen and women, someone who could have been a grandfather or great-grandfather. Their life stories share similarities.
Like Jackson, Boston is a native Texan. He grew up in Trinity. Like Jackson, he married a childhood friend, his next-door neighbor. But while Jackson’s service was brief, Boston found a path leading him to be the highest ranking officer in Southeast Texas.
“I didn’t have to go through what he did because he blazed that trail 70 years ago,” 40-yearold Boston said.
After learning about Jackson’s service a few months ago, Boston decided to try to find a way to make his birthday special. He contacted Houston’s chapter of the Montford Point Marine Association, which Black Marines had created to remember their service, to see if there was a way to honor him with a replica of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded en masse to Montford Point Marines in 2012. Then they got to work.
“It was important to me,” said Robert Alridge, the Houston chapter’s president and a master gunnery sergeant who spent two decades in the Marines before retiring in 1993. “They went through a lot to prove they were worthy to be called Marines. We stand on their shoulders.”
At the home of Jackson’s daughter, dozens gathered Saturday afternoon to wish Jackson well, to celebrate his 99th birthday and to honor him with the a small ceremony marking his service as a Montford Point Marine.
“What he did contributed to the success we have today,” said Sgt. Christopher Broussard, an active-duty Marine stationed in Houston.
In a brief ceremony, the Marines noted the history of Montford Point, later renamed Camp Johnson, in honor of Hashmark Johnson — the first military installation named for Black Marine.
A representative of the Department of Veterans Affairs spoke, as did a member of U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s staff. They honored him with a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol and an official proclamation.
Jackson nodded occasionally, his face lit up in a wide smile.
“I have had a wonderful life,” he said in an interview a day earlier. “I have no complaints.”
And then, there was one more honor, as the crowd broke out in song to wish Jackson a happy birthday.