About the Author

Eugene S. Mosley, born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is a journalist and a public speaker. His book, Footprints of the Montford Point Marines, is a story told to him by his father that was hidden by the U.S. Marine Corps for over seventy years. His determination and the pain he felt about those dire circumstances prompted him to write this story, interpreted from his dad and other knowledgeable sources.When his father, Thomas Mosley, was transferred to a military base in Warner Robins, Georgia, Eugene was one of the first to integrate an all-White military ROTC high school where he enrolled in 1965. Although he experienced racial bigotry in the Deep South, it was not to compare to the hatred and indignities that his father and the other Black men faced at the segregated Marine Corps base at Montford Point Camp between 1942 and 1949.Eugene furthered his studies at Temple University in Philadelphia in the School of Civil Engineering. He is an archivist and collector for the permanent exhibition of Thomas Mosley, Frank Johnson, and the Montford Point Marines at the Harriet Tubman Museum in Macon, Georgia.Eugene is a member of the Montford Point Marine Association, which allowed him to reach out to and speak with dozens of the original Montford Point Marines who served in World War II. Some he made aware for the first time their qualifications to receive the Congressional Gold Medal that they were subsequently awarded.He was a keynote speaker during a ceremony at Rutland High School in Macon, Georgia, when the military JROTC wing of the school was renamed and dedicated to Thomas Mosley and Frank Johnson, also an original Montford Point Marine, by the Bibb County Board of Education and President Dr. Thelma Dillard and Superintendent Dr. Curtis Jones.

Reviews

Eugene Mosley's Footprints of the Montford Point Marines is much more than a moving tribute from a son to his father. Told largely through the eyes of Thomas Mosley, one of the nation's first African American Marines, who trained at Montford Point, a portion of Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, it also contains additional research on the White officers and Black noncommissioned officers who trained them and accompanied them into battle in World War II's Pacific theater. Mosley's work, easily accessible, is a valuable contribution to the literature on the gradual, and often grudging, acceptance of African Americans into the American military. -Melton McLaurin, Professor Emeritus of History, University of North Carolina Wilmington, and author of The Marines of Montfort Point, America's First Black Marines