Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Carl Brashear
Carl
Brashear was the first African American Master Diver in the U.S.
Navy, despite a crippling injury.
He was born
in Tonneyville, Kentucky on January 19, 1931 to a sharecropper
family and raised in Sonora, Kentucky. Master Chief Brashear joined
the Navy in February 1948 at the age of 17.
Confined to
the galley, like most Blacks and Filipinos of the era, Master Chief
Brashear decided to make deep-sea diving his profession which was
unheard of for a Black American sailor at the time.
He was
admitted to the Navy Dive School and overcame a seventh grade
education to have a notable career as a navy diver. In 1966, he was
badly injured in an accident during the recovery of a nuclear
warhead in the Mediterranean. Surgeons had to amputate his left leg
below his knee. Master Chief Brashear refused to submit to medical
survey boards in an attempt to retire him as unfit for duty. He
demonstrated that he could still dive and perform other duties. In
1970, Master Chief Carl Brashear qualified as the first Black master
diver in the history of the U.S. Navy.
In 1998, he
became one of only seven enlisted men to be enshrined in the naval
archives.
