Under Public Law 112-59, the Congressional Gold Medal will be awarded to the Montford Point Marines, in recognition of their personal sacrifice and service to their country.
On June 25, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 8802 establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission and opening the doors for the very first African-Americans to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. The first African-American recruits were trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
The United States Mint recently presented candidate designs for the Montford Point Marines Congressional Gold Medal to the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) for review and recommendation. There were six different obverse designs and six different reverse designs provided.
The CFA made their review during a meeting held on February 16, 2012. Rather than making a recommendation for specific obverse and reverse designs, the CFA recommended a combination of elements from several designs. For the obverse, the members recommended that alternative MP-O-04 should be simplified by removing the group of leaping soldiers from the bottom of the design and alternative MP-O-05 should be used as a model for further developing the marines’ faces shown in profile. For the reverse design, the members recommended that the leaping soldiers from alternative MP-O-04 should be used within the composition of MP-R-06.
The CCAC reviewed the design candidates at a meeting held on February 28, 2012. For the obverse, they recommended alternative MP-O-05, which received 21 out of 24 votes. For the reverse, they recommended MP-R-05, with 16 out of 24 votes.
Obverse Design Candidates
Reverse Design Candidates
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