Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Lorna M. Mahlock (right) speaks in 2020 to Marines during a tour of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. (Dalton S. Swanbeck/U.S. Marine Corps)
WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps has a Black woman commanding in its ranks as a two-star general for the first time in history.
President Joe Biden nominated Brig. Gen. Lorna Mahlock for the promotion to major general earlier this month and the Senate confirmed her nomination Thursday by voice vote.
Mahlock, 54, is the National Security Agency’s deputy director of cybersecurity for combat support and is based at Fort Meade, Md.
Rob Joyce, director of cybersecurity at the NSA, has called Mahlock a “groundbreaking Marine.”
“She is an awesome leader, great partner and … blazing a trail as the first Black woman two-star Marine!,” Joyce wrote in a Twitter post.
The Jamaican-born Mahlock has been a Marine for most of her life. After emigrating with her family to New York City, she enlisted in the Marine Corps in the mid-1980s and became an officer in 1991. Since then, she’s served in many posts — including U.S. European Command in Germany, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Japan and Marine Tactical Air Command Squadron 38 in Southern California.
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Lorna Mahlock in 2018. (U.S. Marine Corps)
In 2018, just two years after the Pentagon opened combat roles to women, Mahlock became the first Black woman in the Marines to ascend to the rank of brigadier general.
“We’ve got women flying strike aircraft, women in the infantry and artillery and tanks,” she told her alma mater, Marquette University, last year. “Regardless of where you’re from or your color, gender or ethnicity, we’re just trying to figure out how to build the best fighting force.”
Mahlock served as a commander during Operation Iraqi Freedom and holds several military honors, including the Legion of Merit and Meritorious Service Medal.
Mahlock follows in the footsteps of several other Black women who have made history in the armed forces — such as Brig. Gen. Hazel W. Johnson-Brown, who became the Army’s first Black female general in 1979, and Marcelite Harris, the first Black woman promoted to major general in any service branch. Harris died in 2019 at the age of 75.
