Fort Ord the first U.S. Army base to fully integrate after desegregation order
By Lauren Seaver
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MARINA, California (KSBW) — Fort Ord, a U.S. Army base founded in 1917, made history as the first military base to implement full racial integration following President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order to desegregate the armed forces.
From his business, The Brass Tap in Marina, Karl Waller reflects on his childhood home at Fort Ord, where his father, Samuel James Waller, was stationed in the mid-1970s.
“I remember him getting up in the morning, running with the soldiers along the beach,” Waller said.
For more than 80 years, Fort Ord served approximately 1.5 million soldiers. Marina local Howard Gustafson, whose father was one of those men, has since become a historian and written three books about the base and its soldiers.
“It started out with 15,000 and quickly escalated as the draft continued to 25-30,” Gustafson said.
The base housed thousands of soldiers training for World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the invasion of Panama.
President Truman’s executive order in 1948 abolished segregation in the armed forces and mandated full integration across all branches. Fort Ord was the first to implement these changes.
“It opened up the military. Everybody saw it as a chance to get a hold on life, and military was a good way to go, and it didn’t matter who you were,” Gustafson said.
Waller shared how his father, originally from the South, valued the sense of equality fostered by the integrated military.
“My dad often talked about being from the South—how important that was for him to feel equal and part of one military,” Waller said.
However, integration faced initial resistance. According to the National Archives, the process took time, and by the end of the Korean conflict, almost all of the military was integrated.
“There must’ve been a lot of meetings with the captain and lieutenant amongst guys when you started integrating,” Gustafson said. “But as time went on, they started the first classes on race relations in 1952.”
Lyndon Tarver, president of the NAACP Monterey County, highlighted Fort Ord’s broader impact.
“That started basically here and then spread across the United States,” Tarver said.
“Locally it impacted the community because we had a lot of Black folks here. Seaside was probably about 35% Black,” Tarver added.
Waller noted the base’s role as a “pipeline of diversity,” particularly for Black Americans, and how its closure shifted local demographics.
“Fort Ord was a pipeline of diversity—particularly for Black Americans. Once that pipeline died, you could see the demographics for the Blacks in particular, just shift,” Waller said.
President George H.W. Bush signed the Base Realignment and Closure Act in 1988, leading to Fort Ord’s official shutdown in 1994.
Despite its closure, Fort Ord’s legacy endures through the stories of those who lived and served there, including Waller and Gustafson, who continue to honor their fathers’ contributions.
“Remember Fort Ord for all the people, remember what it contributed to the area, and how much it helped the United States,” Gustafson said.
“Those soldiers are the ones who defend our rights and sometimes we take for granted,” Waller said. “As I look back, I try each and every day to reflect on that.”
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