Black Marines, Camp Lejune, Jacksonville, NC, 1944.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is different about this Marine picture. All the men in it are Black. It’s called a segregated American military, 1944. My father, Mr. Pearl Rush, is on the second row down from the top, second person over from the left. This had to be the ultimate mixed-feelings-phenomenon for the men of this unit, or for Black people anywhere, representing America in segregated units. It amounted to making a declaration that one would die for a country that didn’t even have the decency to treat you as an equal. One can only begin to imagine the complexity of the thoughts that ran through the minds of men like these when they pondered their situation.

On a much lighter note, for you sports fans out there, there was a guy in my father’s platoon named Jerry Stackhouse. I am not certain, but I believe Daddy said that Mr. Stackhouse was from Kinston., NC. Jerry Stackhouse is the 5th person over from the left on the same row as my father. Daddy was convinced that the Jerry Stackhouse of his platoon at Camp Lejune in Jacksonville, NC is the grandfather of the Jerry Stackhouse superstar basketball player at the University Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the mid-1990’s. He felt the name was too uncommon for this to have been simply mere coincidence.