✍🏾: @tiff.chey
On March 14th, President #JoeBiden signed the “Six Triple Eight” Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021 into law which will award a Congressional Gold Medal to the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.
The bill states that the honor was granted “in recognition of their pioneering military service, devotion to duty, and contributions to increase the morale of personnel stationed in the European theater of operations during World War II.”
The “Six Triple Eight” were an all-Black Women’s Army Corps unit comprised of about 850 Black women who were tasked with overcoming a massive backlog of mail. According to the US Army Center of Military History, they spent months sorting through mail and packages that were stacked to the ceiling in various warehouses.
This work was not easy or safe! On top of these warehouses being unheated, they even traveled to Great Britain in 1945, surviving encounters with Nazi U-boats and a German rocket explosion along the way.
During this time, the Six Triple Eight set up a new mail tracking system and cleared the six-month backlog of mail in just three months. According to the National World War II Museum, the unit processed about 17 million pieces of mail by the end of the war.
The unit was later moved to France and then ultimately disbanded without fanfare in 1946. There were no commemorative ceremonies for members when they came home at the war’s end.
Army Major Charity Earley (née Adams) led the Six Triple Eight and later rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. She died in 2002, and her son praised the belated recognition last year. “It’s wonderful, and it’s time,” said Stanley Earley III. “It should have happened 50, 60 years ago. But there is now the opportunity for a recognition that these folks did all these things that were so important.”
With great bravery, these Black women soldiers took the initiative of bringing order to the mail crisis and boosted the morale of the soldiers who were fighting. The Six Triple Eight even adopted the motto “No mail, low morale”.
The White House has not yet set a schedule for the ceremony, but we will keep you all posted! #BWLM💕
