Charity Adams Earley: Leader of the Six Triple Eight

Ahead of this week's movie premiere of "6888." read all about Charity Adams, the remarkable woman who is getting long overdue attention.

Among the things we take for granted, mail might be at the top of the list. In the 1940s, mail was a small thing that carried a lot of weight for American GIs fighting in World War II. Letters and packages from home were a lifeline. And for military commanders, mail was absolutely critical for keeping up morale. At the end of 1944, the military mail system came to a dead halt in Europe. Enter Charity Adams, an unknown 26-year-old African American Army Major from Ohio. She and her troops came to the rescue, fixed the mail system, and played a role in the war’s victory.

Adams was the commanding officer of the Six Triple Eight – shorthand for the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion – the Army’s only all-female, mostly Black unit stationed overseas. Its very existence broke gender and race barriers in the segregated military of the 1940s. And as the leader, Adams would secure her place in history as the first American woman officer of color.

The mission of the Six Triple Eight – which was unknown even to its 855 members until they arrived in England – was to clear a massive backlog of mail and packages intended for 7 million American servicemen stationed throughout Europe. The amount of mail was staggering – 17 million letters and packages, undelivered for months and sometimes years, stuffed into mail sacks stacked floor to ceiling in three air hangers. It was a sight that took their breath away.

With a deadline of six months to undo the backlog, “no mail, no morale,” became the unit’s battle cry. Working 24/7 in three shifts, the women were assigned as either locator clerks, who created and organized cards (no computers then) that tracked the names, serial numbers and unit addresses of the servicemen; or postal clerks, who processed the mail by matching them to the correct card. This was not easy since war shifted soldiers constantly from one battle location to another. Common names required another level of detective work. For example, there were reportedly 7500 men in the armed forces named “Robert Smith,” and mail to them was variously addressed as “Bob,” “Rob,” “Bobby” or “Junior.”

On top of that, the mail had sat around in conditions that were not climate controlled. Letters were dirty and mildewed, the handwriting on envelopes had faded and sometimes the ink was blurry from being wet. Food in packages had long been spoiled and the parcels ripped apart by rats that had made the hangars their home.

This was the monumental job that awaited Adams and the Six Triple Eight. But it was only the latest of challenges that had begun on their journey crossing the Atlantic a few weeks earlier.

The members of the battalion had been specially selected from the newly created Black unit of Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps and sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia for a month of basic combat training. In early February 1945, they shipped out of New York City on the Ile de France, once a luxury ocean liner that had been converted into a troop transport for the war.

The trip over the rough winter waters of the Atlantic turned into a life and death episode as they came within sight of landing in Glasgow, Scotland. Off the coast the ship ran into a school of German submarines, or U-boats. It was a tense hour of rattling teeth, furniture and pots and pans, as they maneuvered to avoid becoming the target of torpedoes.

After debarking, the troops boarded a train that would take them across the border south to Birmingham – England’s second largest city located in the center of the country. An even more terrifying welcome awaited. Exhausted from a long day of travel, the women were looking forward to settling into King Edward’s School, their living quarters outside of the city. As they stepped onto the icy ground, they received a “welcome to England” greeting like no other as German V-bombs exploded overhead. This was the first time any of the women had experienced being bombed and as they scrambled for safety, they knew it wouldn’t be the last.

A few days later, they were introduced to the dirty, dank and dismal environment in which they would be working. The hangars holding the mail were dusty and unheated, forcing many of the women to bundle up in ski clothing, and the lighting, already poor was made worse by windows that were blacked out to avoid being a bombing target.

Despite the conditions, the Six Triple Eight processed an average of 65,000 pieces of mail per shift according to Army records. By May of 1945, three months ahead of schedule, Adams was able to say, “mission accomplished,” to her superiors.

The Six Triple Eight was deployed to France after successfully completing their mission in Birmingham, England.

Under incredibly difficult circumstances, Adams and The Six Triple Eight had exceeded expectations under the double burdens of racism and sexism. Forced to comply with segregated policies that did not allow them to live or socialize with white military units, they focused on their mission. They created their own mess hall, hair salon, carpool and rec center. When they were invited by the Red Cross to a Blacks only club, they boycotted it. Ironically, the Six Triple Eight were given a warm welcome by the English citizens of Birmingham who had no problem socializing with the women in pubs and community centers.

For Adams the stakes of defiance were higher. In her 1989 autobiography, One Woman’s Army, Adams recounted an incident when a general arrived to inspect the Six Triple Eight. Told that the troops who had worked the night shift would not be in attendance, the general retorted, ''I'm going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit.''

Capt. Abbie Campbell and Major Charity Adams inspect members of the 6888 Battalion in Birmingham, England in 1945.

‘Over my dead body, sir,' was Adams’ steady reply. Outraged, the general threatened to file court-martial charges for insubordination. The threat didn’t work. Adams began drafting her own court martial brief, charging the general with violating the Army’s order against using racially charged language. Eventually with the intervention of military superiors, the matter was resolved and no court martials took place.

It’s worth remembering that before the war, the few women who were in the American miliary were mostly nurses, secretaries or clerks. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, sending the United States into war, changed that. Everyone was expected to participate in some way toward the war effort.

Within six months, in May 1942, as part of the country’s mobilization, Congress created the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps or WAAC -- later renamed the Women’s Army Corp (WAC), “for the purpose of making available to the national defense the knowledge, skill and special training of women of the nation.”

Despite the outcry within the military and among the general public against women serving, it was the first of several all-female units that would be created that year. The grim fact was that war resulted in a shortage of men. Women could help solve that problem by taking non-combat roles in order to “free up men” to go to battle.

Fired up by opportunity to be part of the conflict, 350,000 women would eventually sign up as WACs (Army), WAVEs (Navy), WASPs (Army Air Force), SPARs (Coast Guard) and in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.

For African Americans however, both men and women – it was more complicated. In a segregated military, they had to fight to be in the fight. Post offices, for example, were designated enlistment sites, yet there were instances where they refused to provide applications or help to Black Americans. Black male enlistees trained separately from white recruits. And once their training was complete, their assignments were often in support roles. They reported mostly to white commanders and Black soldiers were segregated in separate units on the battlefield. There were some notable exceptions, such as the Tuskegee Airmen who distinguished themselves during World War II.

Despite being treated as second class citizens, Black Americans – and Americans of any color – had to put aside pride and place patriotism above segregation. Many did so with their eyes on a bigger prize. The Double V(ictory)campaign started by Black activists saw the war as an opportunity to beat fascism and racial discrimination at home; by enlisting they hoped to receive the respect and dignity that would lead to civil rights for Blacks after the war. For Black women, there was a Third V – sexism.

Like most people who enlisted, Charity Adams never saw herself in a military uniform. She had intended to make her mark on the world in other ways. Born Dec. 5, 1918, in Kittrell, North Carolina, as the first of four children in her family, Adams had excelled in school, graduating as valedictorian of her high school class at 16. She had her choice of scholarships and chose to go to Wilberforce University in Ohio, the oldest of the historically black colleges. There, she triple-majored in physics, math and Latin with a minor in history.

After graduation in 1938, Adams was hired to teach math and science to junior high schoolers in Columbia, South Carolina. During the summers when school was out, she pursued graduate work in psychology classes at Ohio State University. The summer of 1942 was different, however. She received a letter unexpectedly from Georgia Myrtle Teal, the Dean of Women at Wilberforce University, who she known from her undergraduate years. Teal wrote that she was recommending Adams for the WAAC and urged her to join for its leadership and career opportunities.

“I was told how completely out of my mind I must be to ever consider leaving the security of a teaching position to go into something as uncertain as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps,” Adams wrote in One Woman’s Army. “My friends did not know that the uncertainty of the Army was far more appealing at this point than the certainty of the dullness and rigidity that the teaching profession had offered in the last few months.”

By July of that year, Adams was on her way to Fort Des Moines, Iowa to become part of the first WAAC class of African American women. For the 39 women in this historic group, the adjustment of having to live and train in segregated facilities, as mandated by the Army, may have been more difficult than the actual training itself. Even after passing basic training, the discrimination continued. Base commanders refused to accept their assignment saying they did not have segregated facilities to house them. As a result, many Black WAACs languished at their training bases working at menial assignments including cooking or cleaning duties.

Adams was not one of them. Despite the racism, she graduated top of her class and was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation, a distinction that led to her appointment for several command posts at the Fort. Two years later, when the War Department acceded to demands to deploy an active WAAC unit abroad, they tapped Adams to lead the 6888.

Pleased by the success in Birmingham, the Six Triple Eight was deployed to two other locations to work their magic on backlogged mail. In May 1945, a few days after the Nazis surrendered, ending the war in Europe, they arrived in Rouen, France. With the help of French civilians, using the same round the clock schedule and process they established in England, the Six Triple Eight managed to pull off the same feat in three months. One more assignment awaited. In October,1945, the Army moved them in Paris to finish the last of the undelivered mail overseas. With the war officially over, a third of the unit had been discharged and sent back to the United States, so the work took longer. By spring of 1946, the entire unit returned home and the 6888 was officially at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

The women of the Six Triple Eight received medals for their service from the military but there was no homecoming parade or official welcome of any sort. Many took advantage of the GI bill to continue their education but for the most part their roles in history were forgotten.

Charity Adams was promoted to Lt. Colonel, becoming one of the highest ranked women in the military. She worked briefly for the Veterans Administration after the war, went back to graduate school and completed her master’s degree in vocational psychology. In 1949 she married a fellow war veteran, Stanley Earley. The two lived briefly in Switzerland while he finished medical school before they returned to the States to start their careers and a family.

In her post military life, Adams became a community leader in Dayton Ohio and later a dean at state colleges in Tennessee and Georgia. In 2023, the Army’s Fort Lee in Virginia was renamed Fort McGregg-Lee. The new designation honors her and Lt. General Arthur Gregg, the first Black American Lt. General.

The promise of a civil rights movement that Black activists had hoped would be kick started by the war would be two decades away. Official recognition for the Six Triple Eight would take even longer. In 2018 an official monument to the 6888 was unveiled at Fort Leavenworth Kansas. In 2022, Congress unanimously voted to award 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2023, the Army renamed Fort Lee, Virginia.

© Alice Look 2024

Executive Producer

Remarkable Women Project