experience, and be between the ages of 20 and 50 years. Certain regulations with respect to marriage applied to both enlisted and officer candidates. Married women could enlist provided their husbands were not in the USCG. Unmarried women had to agree not to marry until they had finished their training period. After training, they could marry a civilian or service man who was not in the USCG. In August 1943, recruiting policies were changed to permit SPARS to marry men of the USCG without having to resign. The USCG would continue to accept applicants who were married to men in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps, but would not accept a woman who was already married to an enlisted man or an officer serving in the USCG. However, women could join the SPARS if their husbands were enrolled as temporary members of the reserve. In November 1943, the marriage policy with respect to recruits was changed further to permit women who were wives of cadets, warrant officers, or enlisted men of the USCG to enlist or be commissioned in the SPARs. The ban remained on women whose husbands were commissioned officers in the USCG with the rank of ensign or above. Although the USCG officially opened its doors to African-American women in October 1944, it was not until March 1945 that the first five women were accepted; they were the only African-American women to serve in the SPARS before it was first inactivated in 1947. Although the Women's Army Corps (WAC) accepted African-American women from its inception, the U.S. Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) only began accepting African-American women in October 1944, with fewer than 100 of them serving in the WAVES, and the U.S. Marine Corps Women's Reserve never opened its ranks to African-American women. The five African-American women who served in the SPARS before it was first inactivated in 1947 were: Olivia Hooker, D. Winifred Byrd, Julia Mosley, Yvonne Cumberbatch, and Aileen Cooke. Olivia Hooker was the first of them and thus the first African-American woman to enter the Coast Guard. Training Officer training The agreement between the Navy and the USCG required the initial classes of SPARS officer candidates to receive their indoctrination training at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; officially known as the United States Naval Reserve (WR) Midshipmen's School. But in June 1943, the USCG withdrew from the agreement, and the indoctrination of