The

'Great White Father'

Colonel Samuel A. Woods, Jr., launched the training program for black Marines at Montford (originally Mumford) Point.  At this time, based on the Army's practices, the Marine Corps believed that officers born in the South were uniquely suited to commanding African-Americans, and the colonel fit the pattern, since he hailed from South Carolina.  Born at Arlington, he graduated from The Citadel, South Carolina's military college, and in 1906 accepted a commission in the Corps.  He served in Haiti and Cuba but arrived in France as World War I was ending.  Afterward he saw duty in the Dominican Republic and China, attended the Naval War College, and headed the Marines Corps correspondence schools at the Marine Barracks, Quantico, Virginia.

The colonel's calmness and fairness earned him the respect of the blacks he commanded.  He cultivated a paternalistic relationship with his men and emerged, according to one African-American veteran of the Montford Point Camp, as "the Great White Father of everybody," trying to ease the impact of segregation on the morale of his troops, though he accepted the separation of the races, and insisting that the black Marines exhibit self-pride and competence.