Ernest Smith to receive Congressional Gold Medal

By Ginny Privitar GOSHEN — On June 27, Ernest Smith of Valley View in Goshen will be in Washington, D.C. to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. He is one of a dwindling group of living African-Americans who served in the Marines during World War II. They are known — but not widely — as the Montford Point Marines, after the camp where they trained in North Carolina. Smith is the survivor from the Hudson Valley. All will be honored on that day.

"I feel a great deal of pride in getting this," Smith said. "We’ve heard of the Tuskegee airmen, we’ve heard of the Buffalo soldiers, and nothing was said of the Marines, and here they are fighting and dying out there. Nothing was said of them when they were finally allowed to join the Marines — to die. Because at that time things were fairly ferocious. This is what it means to me — a long overdue recognition.”

Smith’s daughter, Col. Stephanie Smith of the U.S. Marine Corps, is collecting oral histories of the Montford Point Marines.

"The fact that my father could go and get an education allowed him to get a good job and provide a solid foundation so his children could get even more education," Stephanie said. "That allowed my sister to be a medical doctor in 1971. One sister went to Barnard and another to Bryn Mawr. They got to go to great schools. Two of the sisters became lawyers. We wouldn’t have had those opportunities but for my father’s service in the military and the opportunity for him to get an education. I see this replicated in all these people (the Montford Point Marines) that I talk to. The children of Montford Point Marines are doctors, lawyers. The oldest Marine is 102, and his daughter is one of the best doctors in Philly. Some of the men were so wounded in their soul and spirit that they were never the same. The majority went on to achieve incredible things.”

First, the stateside fight against racism

Ernest Smith could hardly have foreseen the arc of history that would culminate in this award.

He was born on Nov. 6, 1922, in Harlem. He was the youngest of a fairly well-off family that lived on a street of fashionable row houses, Hamilton Terrace, near City College.

When World War II broke out, Smith enlisted in the Marines, which had opened up to minorities in 1942.

"Word came out in ’43 of the Marine Corps opening its doors to black Marines," he said. "I said to my parents, ‘Look, if I have to go into combat, I want to be trained to do it. And this is the best way I know that I can go and get the training I need.’ And they said, ‘Fine, you go that way.’”

Smith and other recruits were sent by train to Montford Point, a training camp for black soldiers adjacent to the main training camp for white recruits at Camp Lejeune. The black soldiers had certainly suffered discrimination up north, but the trip south exposed them to a different level of racism.

“Everything was fine until we reached Washington, D.C.," Smith recalled. "There we were transferred to the back of the car, and segregation began in earnest."

He said it was "extremely difficult to accept, being a northerner and not exposed to this kind of attitude and behavior of people."

At Camp Montford Point, the black soldiers were domiciled in flimsy shacks, unlike the brick buildings with steam heat that their white counterparts enjoyed. At night they’d extend their feet toward the fire to keep warm while plagued by snakes and hordes of mosquitoes. The white Marines and townspeople in nearby Jacksonville treated them poorly. They were told they could patronize only “colored” stores.

“You’re here to fight a war, not segregation," Smith said. "And you had to accept this or else — get out.”

At the end of training, he was assigned to the 23rd Marine Depot Company. On the trip west, to depart for the war in the Pacific, the train carrying white and black Marines stopped at a number of places where the white Marines were cheered and offered food for the trip. In contrast, some of the black Marines were spat upon.

Fighting in the Pacific The Montford Point Marines hauled supplies and ammunition from ships and landing craft to the beaches and over land to the front lines. They also brought back the dead and wounded. Although not combat troops, the company came under intense fire in the Pacific and at times fought the Japanese. Some died and others were wounded.

They served on Guam, Saipan and Iwo Jima. On Iwo, fighting was intense. On Guam, they mopped up Japanese soldiers still hiding in the hills.

Yet there was time for R&R. At an outdoor movie theater, the native islanders would come and watch movies with the Marines.

"But then we heard that among the natives, there were Japanese there," Smith recalled with a laugh.

They recognized a Japanese fighter in the audience.

"One guy there, who had a weapon on him, opened fire and chased him up into the boondocks," Smith said. From then on, the Marines came armed to the movie screenings.

Then comes love Smith was discharged from the Marines as an E-5 platoon sergeant in April 1946, Like many of his fellow Montford Point Marines, he was determined not to be subject to discrimination again. He and several buddies took a cab to Union Station to avoid the segregated train trip back.

His daughter Andrea said that when her father returned home, he wanted a classic college education. The schools in New York City were jammed with returning vets, and Smith did not want to sit in an auditorium and listen to lecture. He wanted the small-town college experience. He entered St. Dunstan’s College on Prince Edward Island, Canada, the only black person in his college or on the island.

It was a wonderful experience, free of the racism he had encountered in the States. On weekends, the college men would go to dances in town. At a Sadie Hawkins dance one night, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“All the fellows were looking at me saying, 'Go on, go on.' And I turned around and there was Wanda."

They danced the rest of the evening, and he escorted her home to the nurses’ residence. They were both in their last year, grew closer and after graduation continued to see each other.

“I was calling her every evening, seven o’clock on the dot," he said. "And at the end of the month, my father showed me the phone bill and said, ‘My God, boy, you should marry that girl.’ I didn’t want to do things that quick, but the next thing you knew, we got married.”

Ernest Smith and Wanda McPhee were married on Jan. 16, 1952. It was a marriage that would last until Wanda’s death in 2004, and produce 11 children, nine girls and two boys, who went on to excel in many fields. But things were not always easy for the biracial couple.

They lived for a while in Rockland County and then began to look for housing in Goshen. Ernest, Wanda, and both their mothers went together to a realtor, and insisted they did not want to live “across the tracks” in a segregated community. Yet that's exactly where the realtor sent them.

“She gave them hell," Smith said, laughing as he recalled his mother’s reaction. "I walked out.”

Eventually they bought a small farm outside Goshen on Hartley Road, where they lived happily for about 30 years, until the landfill expanded and the stench became overpowering. So they moved again, first to an apartment in the village, then later to Hampton Road.

Raising a family in Goshen Along the way, at a time when few even had a college degree, Smith earned a masters’ in social work. He was a family counselor in Goshen and a psychiatric social worker at the Orange County Mental Health Clinic. For many years he worked at Catholic Charities in Brooklyn, eventually becoming an administrator.

Ernest and Wanda Smith encouraged their children to get a college education. Many did; others achieved success in business. Peter Smith owns Elsie’s Luncheonette in Goshen. Their late daughter Toni owned the Goshen Bakery for more than ten years. Andrea is a writer and once worked for The Times-Herald Record. Stephanie is a colonel in the Marines and the highest-ranking African-American woman in the Corps. Two of the children are lawyers; one is a doctor.

Ernest Smith lived with a daughter for a while after Wanda’s death. But he eventually came to live in Valley View nursing home. He loves it there. “I feel the place is a fine establishment,” he said, and “needed in the community.”

Asked how he felt about the possibility of its being sold, he had this to say, “I don’t know all of the politics that’s going on…I just know that what I see here — obviously it’s run well, the staff is great. And it would be a real shame if it’s not run in the same capacity.”

Recognition, at last In 2011 the bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the Montford Point Marines passed unanimously. President Obama signed it on Nov. 23. 2011.

Montford Point is now called Camp Johnson, after Sgt. Major Gilbert “Hashmark” Johnson, one of the first African-American drill instructors. A monument to the Montford Point Marines has been approved, and the land has been set aside. They will be remembered.