By Dr. Deborah Bailey
AFRO Contributing Editor
The women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion probably never imagined seeing their life stories on the screen. After all, they were just hard-working women from all walks of life.
They were the women willing to trade their best Sunday dresses for uniforms and put their lives on the line for their country. Each lady was more than up for the task: more than 17 million pieces of mail needed to be cleared, to restore lines of communication and boost morale.
The women had six months to do their job– they did it in three. In fact, they were so good, when the war ended they were asked to replicate their success in Rouen, France. And again, they did six months of work in roughly 90 days, working in shifts around the clock.
Now, internationally known director Tyler Perry and other celebrities are determined to tell their story.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) hosted the international premier of “The Six Triple Eight” on Nov. 20, exactly one month before the film’s release to the general public.
“It’s my great honor to tell the story and celebrate these women,” said Perry.
He spoke about the legacy of Lt. Charity Adams Earley, the 6888th Battalion leader, who ended WWII as the highest ranking Black woman in the U.S. Army. Perry told those in attendance about an opportunity he had to explore items that once belonged to Adams Earley during a rehearsal.
Credit for screening photos: AFRO Photos / Dr. Deborah Bailey
“I get a knock on the door, and it’s one of the transportation guys…he said ‘I want to show you something.’ We opened the door, and there’s a trunk from 1944, from the war. We look at the side of it and it says, ‘Charity Adams,’” recalled Perry. “We opened it up and her uniform, some things from our garden– two or three branches– all these things are in the letters, things that she had written out.”
“I feel like all of these women– their souls, their spirits– were rallying around us to tell the story,” Tyler told the audience members present.
Perry noted how many of the women returned home and packed away their former selves.
“They all came home and settled back into their lives because it was taboo for a woman to be in the Army. This is before the army was segregated in 1948,” he said.
Now, years later, the story of the brave women of the 6888th is being put on the world stage.
Credit: Photo courtesy of National Archives
The internationally known director was joined by cast members Kerry Washington and Ebony Obsidian, who participated in a panel after the screening to talk about their experiences in portraying the real life women of the 6888th Battalion.
While some may have been unfamiliar with the story, one guest, U.S. Army Colonel Travis Hill, said his line of work afforded him the opportunity to learn about women in the past.
“I am in human resources,” he told the AFRO at the screening. “There are a lot of postal organizations in the Army, so we definitely know and honor this unit that served in World War II.”
Members of Congress, family members of the women in the 6888th Battalion and military personnel, such as Elizabeth Helms Frazier, a retired master sergeant in the U.S. Army (E-8) were among the special guests for the screening.
Frazier said that even though the women are seen as heroes today, in the 1940s, there was less fanfare.
“These women were like many veterans of World War II, and veterans in general. They just did what they were told to do and came home. That part of their lives was done,” said Frazier.
Frazier said she first learned about the 6888 Battalion as an enlisted soldier, seeing a small picture of the regiment from time to time during her more than 30 years military service.
“I always said I wanted to be part of that unit,” she said, before she learned the women served in World War II.
Frazier, along with U.S. Army Col. (Ret.) Edna Cummings, the late U.S. Army Major (Ret.) Edward Cummings and Delores Rudolph, who also retired from the U.S. Army raised money for the first monument to honor the 6888 Battalion, dedicated in 2018 at Buffalo Solider Park at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
It was at the Ft. Leavenworth ceremony that Senator Jerry Moran, (R-K) said aloud to Frazier that the 6888 Battalion should be honored with a Congressional Medal.
“That ceremony put the bug in our ear and Edna began the work of drafting the memos that would soon become legislation,” Frazier said.
Cummings has been very vocal about how she used the archives of the AFRO American Newspapers to find information about the women- right down to the addresses of the more than 855 members of the now internationally known unit. Legislation honoring the 6888th Battalion with the Congressional Gold Medal was passed by the Senate in 2021 and the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, when it was signed into law by President Joseph Biden.
Now Hollywood has come to call.
In the coming weeks multiple screenings will be held in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area.
Perry’s film on the Black, all-woman battalion will be released in select theaters on Dec. 6 and on Netflix Dec. 20.
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