| Birth: | May 31, 1922
Hamlet
Richmond County
North Carolina, USA | | Death: | Apr. 10, 2005
Philadelphia County
Pennsylvania, USA | 
First African American U.S. Marine Corps Officer. The Marine Corps had barred blacks until President Franklin D. Roosevelt forced the opening of ranks with a 1941 executive order. Drafted in May of 1943, he and other black wartime Marines were trained at Montford Point North Carolina. They became known as the Montford Point Marines. His first application for Officers Candidate School was denied, but while serving in the South Pacific, he impressed his commanding officer enough to earn his recommendation. One of only 20,000 black Marines to serve in World War II, Branch earned his 2nd Lieutenant's bars as the first Marine black officer on November 10, 1945. After WW II, he went into the Reserves, was reactivated during the Korean War and was sent to Camp Pendleton, California as a training officer. Discharged in 1952, he remained in the Reserves, was promoted to Captain and resigned in 1955. He completed a degree in physics at Temple and established a science department at Philadelphia's Dobbins High School, where he taught until his retirement in 1988. The Marine Corps honored him as a pioneer in integration by naming a training building for him at Marine Officers Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia in 1997. In 2004, he was honored at the 95th annual convention of the NAACP in Philadelphia. (bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith)
Search Amazon for Frederick Branch | | | Burial:
Quantico National Cemetery
Quantico
Prince William County
Virginia, USA |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Originally Created by: John "J-Cat" Griffith
Record added: Apr 12, 2005
Find A Grave Memorial# 10762584 |
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