Newspaper Page Text
llae Augusta News-Review, January 4, 1973
First Black Marine Sergeant Major Retires
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Sgt. Maj. Edgar R. Huff
The first black sergeant
major in the Marine Corps
retired this Fall, bringing to a
close one of the most
distinguished and unique
careers any black has served in
the American military.
He is Edgar R. Huff who led
the first black Marines into
China at the close of World
War 11. Nearly 25 years later,
he was decorated for saving a
white Marine half his age
during the Tet Offensive in
South Vietnam.
At retirement, he was the
first black to serve 30 years in
the Corps and had been
sergeant major longer than any
other of his rank in the U.S.
Armed Forces.
Sgt. Maj. Huff came from
modest circumstances to
achieve high military
distinction and accomplish
ments in three wars. He was
working the night shift in a
steel plant in his native
Gadsden, Alabama, when
America entered World War
11. His father, now deceased,
was a veteran of World War I
and hoped his son would enter
the Marines. Young Huff
agreed. “I read one day in the
paper that if a Negro was
qualified he could be
accepted,” Huff recalls. “I
always heard the Marine Corps
was the best and toughest. I
wanted to be a part of it. I still
feel that it’s the best Armed
Force.”
So on June 26, 1942, he
began his remarkable career as
one of the first 50 blacks ever
chosen for the Marines. The
Corps, now fully integrated,
had changed markedly from
those segregated days. But
despite the limitations of
segregated status, Huff went
from private to first sergeant in
just 23 months while serving
entirely within the U.S.
Then he was made the
sergeant-in-charge of all
training of black recruits at
Montford Point, North
Carolina, near his present
home.
In the Pacific, Huff and
other blacks of the sth Marine
Depot Company moved
supplies to fighting units that
were all-white. In 1946, he led
a black unit into Tsien Tsin,
the first ever on Chinese soil.
Hardly any black has passed
through the Corps since then
who has not heard of Sgt. Maj.
Huff or been impressed by his
massive six-foot-six-inch
frame, squared away manner,
and sense of good humor and
fair play.
In Korea he got his chance
to fight, serving as a weapons
company “gunny” sergeant
with the Ist Marine Division.
He made sergeant major - his
present rank - on December
Page 4
31, 1955. He had gone as far
an an enlisted man could, and
many were recommending that
he become a commissioned
officer. “I declined it because
the pay for sergeant majors was
higher than what I could have
received as a newly
commissioned second
lieutenant,” he says. “But, 1
feel that had I accepted the
appointment that by this time
I would be a field grade
officer.”
Huff returned to combat as
"Boy Os
The Year”
Competition
Opens
NEW YORK, “It’s time we
give recognition to millions of
boys who don’t make the bad
headlines, boys who don’t
shoot dope, rob or steal,” John
L. Burns, president of Boys’
Clubs of America, said today as
the Boys’ Clubs launched the
27th annual “Boy of the Year”
competition.
“The ‘Boy of the Year’
program is one of our
organization’s best means to
encourage good boys to remain
that way and not to travel the
road of crime or violence,”
Burns said.
He pointed out that
scholarships totaling $8,500
are annually awarded to “Boy
of the Year” winners through a
Reader’s Digest Foundation
grant designed to further
Juvenile Decency by
stimulating interest in higher
education. The national winner
receives a $4,000 cash
scholarship, while nine regional
winners receive SSOO awards.
More than 1,000 Boys’
Clubs throughout the country
will be eligible to compete in
the project, open to all Club
members between the ages of
12 and 18. Contestants are
judged on the quantity and
quality of service to their
home, school, church,
community and Boys’ Club.
By tradition, the national
“Boy of the Year” is
“installed” by the President in
a White House ceremony
during the National Boys’ Club
Week. He also meets other
government officials, visits
New York for press, radio and
television interviews and is an
honored guest at the annual
Boys’ Clubs convention. He
will also be an honored guest in
August at the American Legion
convention in Honolulu
All winners wdl be
announced during National
Boys’ Club Week, April 8-14.
the sergeant major of the Ist
Military Police Battalion in
Vietnam. When the enemy
attacked Danang in the early
morning hours of January 30,
1968, Huff ran through an
open field of withering enemy
fire to reach a young wounded
white Marine. Round after
round kicked up dirt around
the Marine. So Huff threw
himself over the man and took
rounds in his elbow and
shoulder, but saving the
Marine’s life.
Though wounded, Huff
pulled the man onto a stretcher
and dragged him to safety.
Later the Marine wrote:
“Sergeant Major, I thank you
for my life.” Says Huff, “He
was one of my men, black or
white. I would have done the
same even if I got shot to hell
in the process.”
For that action, Huff was
awarded the Bronze Star Medal
with “V” for valor. When his
wounds healed he became the
Sergeant Major of the 3rd
Marine Amphibious Force; the
largest combat force ever under
Marine command. It also was
Georgia Infant Mortality Rate
Exceeds Nation By 47%
For Georgia the grim
statistics on infant mortality
have spurred her into being a
national leader in efforts to
produce a better quality of life
for her citizens. A state
conference-workshop planned
for February 16-18 in Atlanta,
to discuss prevention of
physical and emotional
impairment of children, is the
first state-wide meeting ever to
to held. Inquiries have already
been received from other states
seeking information on the
Georgia model.
The Conference, entitled
“Continuum,” is an outgrowth
of the American Medical
Association Congress in
Chicago last May focusing on
the beginning of life and what
could be done to improve the
birthright of all children ... the
right to be born healthy. That
meeting concentrated on
maternal and child health from
conception through
adolescence within a social,
environmental and educational
frame of reference.
Georgians attending the
congress returned home to
initiate plans for a meeting
along the same lines bringing
together professionals,
government leaders and lay
people on a state level. It is
being sponsored by The
National Foundation-March of
one of three times in his
career that Huff had served as
sergeant major to General
Robert E. Cushman, now
commandant of the Corps.
Sgt. Maj. Huff now confines
his exercise to fishing and small
game hunting or barbecuing at
his home in Hubert, North
Carolina. He is married to the
former Beaulah May McCaskill,
and they have one son, Edgar
Jr., now 14.
Sgt. Maj. Huff recommends
officer training to young blacks
today. “There is no belter way
to become the best,
well-disciplined, mean-and-lean
men,” he says. “Or to see the
world. For the past 30 years I
have seen more of the world
than most men dream about.”
To learn more about becoming
an officer, he advises young
men to call or write their local
Marine recruiter.
Now Sgt. Maj. Huff plans to
see America. “1 plan to visit
every state in the Union with
plenty of hunting, fishing and
relaxing,” he says. “And I look
forward to watching the new
breed we have progressing in
tire Marine Corps.”
Dimes and the Council on
Maternal Health of the State of
Georgia and co-sponsored by
11 other state health groups.
With a rate 47% higher than
the national rate on infant
mortality, Georgia’s maternal
and infant health care services,
nutrition and family life health
education will receive close
attention at the conference.
By raising the level of
awareness of the problems of
prenatal, natal and post natal
care in both professional and
lay areas, the conference hopes
to improve existing conditions
and provide a stimulus to
initiate services where lacking.
Specific recommendations to
the Governor and the
legislature will be followed by
statewide support of
participating groups and
citizens. The slogan is “by
1976 every child will have the
opportunity to be born
healthy”.
Co-sponsors of the
conference are the following:
Georgia Chapter of the
American Academy of
Pediatrics; Ga. Council
Social Workers; Ga. Committee
on Children and Youth; Ga.
Dept, of Human Resources;
Ga. Dietetic Assn.; Ga.
Hospital Assn.; Ga. Medical
Assn.; Ga. State Nurses Assn.;
Ga. State Obstetrical and
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Infant Births, an alliance of 14
volunteer women’s community
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Fulton-DeKalb-Clayton
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writing the Regional National
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Newton Long, M.D., professor
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Emory University. Conference
coordinator is Mrs. Israel
Wilen, chairman of the Council
on Maternal Health for the
State of Georgia.
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