United States Marine Corps

===Minorities===
{{main|Desegregation in the United States Marine Corps|Hispanics in the United States Marine Corps}}
[[File:Howard P. Perry, the first African-American US Marine Corps recruit.tiff|thumb|Howard P. Perry, the first black recruit in the U.S. Marine Corps, 1942.]]
In 1776 and 1777, a dozen [[African American]] marines served in the [[American Revolutionary War]], but from 1798 to 1942, the Marine Corps followed a racially discriminatory policy of denying African Americans the opportunity to serve.<ref name="ShawDonnelly">{{cite web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pAaMOuliPT4C|title=Blacks in the Marine Corps |last1=Shaw |first1=Henry I. Jr. |last2=Donnelly |first2=Ralph W. |publisher=History and Museums Division, Headquarters USMC |location=Washington, DC |year=1975|accessdate=19 May 2022}}</ref> The Marine Corps was the last of the services to recruit African Americans, and its own history page acknowledges that it was a presidential order that "forced the Corps, despite objections from its leadership, to begin recruiting African American Marines in 1942.<ref>Military.com [https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/08/03/marines-will-finally-have-their-first-black-four-star-general.html "Marines Will Finally Have Their First Black Four-Star General]", 3 August 2022</ref> It accepted them as recruits into segregated all-black units.{{r|ShawDonnelly}} For the next few decades, the incorporation of black troops was not widely accepted within the Corps, nor was [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] smoothly or quickly achieved. The integration of non-white Marine Corps personnel proceeded in stages from segregated battalions in 1942, to unified training in 1949, and finally full integration in 1960.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Ebony |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7qA975ldsm4C&pg=PA58 |pages=55–58 |last=Morris |first=Steven |title=How Blacks Upset The Marine Corps: 'New Breed' Leathernecks are Tackling Racist Vestiges |date=December 1969 |volume=25 |number=2 |issn=0012-9011 |publisher=Johnson Publishing Company}}</ref>

Today the Marine Corps is a desegregated force, made up of marines of all races working and fighting alongside each other. As of 2020, African Americans are currently underrepresented in the Marine Corps as compared to their overall percentage of the U.S. population. Concurrently, the Marine Corps is the only service where Hispanics are overrepresented per the same metric.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military |title=Demographics of the U.S. Military |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=13 July 2020 |website=cfr.org |publisher=Council on Foreign Relations |access-date=19 May 2022 |quote=}}</ref>