Major Charity Adams and the Six-Triple-Eight

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Major Charity Adams was the first African-American woman to lead a World War Two battalion. It was known as the Six-Triple-Eight (6888).

The 6888 was a majority African-American women’s unit, the women sorted through mountains of post across Europe, using the motto: 'No Mail, Low Morale'.

Charity went on to become lieutenant colonel, the highest possible rank for women in her unit. She died in 2002.

Her son, Stanley Earley, speaks to Marverine Cole.

This was a Soundtruism production for the BBC World Service.

(Photo: American Women's Army Corps Captain Mary Kearney and American Commanding Officer Major Charity Adams inspect the first arrivals to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion Credit. Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Marverine Cole.
0:50.0	It's winter and the bitter end of 1944 following five long years of war.
0:56.0	A US military plane is flying over the Atlantic from the United States to an unknown destination in Europe.
1:04.0	Inside is Major Charity Adams, quietly making history as the first African-American woman to be sent
1:12.0	abroad as leader of nearly 1,000 women of color on a landmark
1:17.2	World War II mission.
1:18.4	Well you don't really think history when you're doing something.
1:22.1	It's not history until after you do it. So actually I understood that I had that Chevron officers had wanted that assignment, but I had the most troop experience. So if you're going to send nearly a
1:35.2	thousand people overseas, you want somebody who has troop experience.
1:38.1	Traveling at an altitude of about 30,000 feet, Charity Adams is about to open a sealed envelope which will
1:46.5	reveal her orders.
1:48.3	Although I didn't know what the job was and I didn't know where I was going without
1:52.3	able to stay, I didn't know where I was going without having to stay.
1:53.5	I knew that, and this is a premise that I have used in the Army in any place else,
1:59.6	given the same opportunity and training. I'm sure I can do as well as anybody else.
2:05.0	Charity's son Stanley Early tells me that his mother was highly qualified by her mid-20s to get to this point,
	...

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