T he women of the th Central Postal Directory Battalion , the largest unit of Black women to serve overseas during World War II, certainly put their stamp on the war effort—processing about 65, pieces of mail per shift. The roughly officers and enlisted personnel were in charge of delivering mail from the home front to the soldiers fighting in the European theater from to Now, an operation that was totally behind the scenes is front-and-center in a major Hollywood production for the first time.
Kerry Washington plays the leader of the battalion, Charity Adams, as she strives to prove that Black service members deserve the same respect and opportunities that white service members get. The Six Triple Eight follows the story of Lena Derriecott King Ebony Obsidian , a woman from the Philadelphia area who joins the Army hoping to become a nurse after her boyfriend is killed while serving overseas. King was a real person, as was her suitor, a man from her neighborhood named Abram.
After Abram goes overseas, King writes many letters to him that go unanswered—foreshadowing her later work with the —until she finds out that he has died. The women of the had to overcome a lot of discrimination, despite boasting many high achievers. Adams, a native of Columbia, S. The movie shows Black women soldiers donning gas masks in rooms filled with tear gas and climbing rope ladders as part of training, and yet, being asked to give up their seats in a theater. Those kinds of indignities were par for the course, according to an article about the by military history writer Kevin M.
Hymel that inspired the film. In the film, Bethune is telling President Roosevelt that the troops trained by Adams are up for the task. The women of the th battalion went straight to work in a dark warehouse in Birmingham, England, that used to be a school.
The movie shows the women hurrying to turn it into an office. Apparently, in real life, the warehouse was overrun by rats, climbing over mail bags, according to Major General Mari K. Eder says some of the members found they had more freedom in England than in the U. They made friends with locals, and some even went on dates with English men. After organizing 17 million pieces of mail, the was sent to France, where they had six months to clear up a two-year backlog of mail.
