Camp Robert Smalls was a United States Naval training facility, created pursuant to an order signed April 21, 1942 by Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, for the purpose of training Negro seamen at a time when the USN was still segregated by race. The first classes of men to be trained at the camp had "no hope of being commissioned." However, the Navy began training officer candidates at Camp Robert Smalls towards the end of 1943. Robert Smalls's great-grandson, Edward Estes Davidson, trained at Camp Robert Smalls, as did Owen Dodson, Larry Doby, Clark Terry, and Charles Sebree.