My mum beat sexism & racism to boost morale in WW2 – now her story is Netflix smash with Oprah Winfrey & Susan Sarandon

Major Charity Adams anxiously opened the letter she had clung to during the voyage in a plane en route to Britain, halfway across the Atlantic.

The American 26-year-old gave clear instructions: don’t open until after the point of no return.

Top-secret directives for an almost impossible mission to raise spirits on the front lines of the fight against Hitler were contained in the envelope.

With only six months to deliver an incredible 17 million letters to US forces dispersed throughout war-torn Europe, Major Adams and her battalion of black female soldiers were put to the task.

In the latter days of World War Two, American troops were feeling demoralized by this amazing backlog of news from home.

Many of the two million American soldiers who had fought to defeat Germany across Europe since D-Day in the summer of 1944 were deprived of communications from their loved ones.

Their letters from loved ones and friends had not arrived by early 1945 and had been rotting in rat-infested warehouses in the heavily devastated area of Birmingham for as long as two years.

Major Charity Adams, the commander of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, sometimes known as Six Triple Eight, was thus tasked with the enviable task of transporting this massive pile of mail to the front line in January 1945.

In order to give soldiers hope, she and her team of 855 women, the majority of whom were African American, had to overcome sexism, racism, and insurmountable obstacles.

The Six Triple Eight, a new movie starring Kerry Washington, Susan Sarandon, and Oprah Winfrey, is based on their incredible experience.

The Netflix film was shot in Bradford, West Yorkshire, for a few scenes.

When Major Adams arrived in Birmingham before her troops, she found that a German bombing raid the previous day had destroyed their barracks.

She promptly took control of Edgbaston’s King Edward’s School and used it as their temporary headquarters.

Her first responsibility was to make the quarters habitable and to establish a method for locating troops who were dispersed over the continent.

After arriving in Glasgow by sea a month later, her battalion traveled to Birmingham, where they encountered an impossible challenge.

They started looking for the soldiers to whom the letters were intended in nine gloomy, unheated buildings near the city’s airport that had blacked-out windows and were teeming with rats.

While many soldiers had died in battle without receiving the heartwarming news from home, others were only addressed by nickname.

Around them, German air strikes continued to drop bombs.

During World War Two, the 6888th Battalion was the first and only black battalion to be dispatched overseas that was exclusively composed of women.

Major Adams observed, “The longer the 6888 were on the job, the more we appreciated the value of our work,” during a 1995 commemoration to African-American veterans that President Bill Clinton attended. How the mail would ease the burden of loneliness, dread, and the absence of friends.

No white, no black, and no rank existed. just being aware of our motto: “no mail, no morale.”

Calmness under fire

Although Major Adams passed away in 2002, Stanley, her proud son from Maryland, stated in an exclusive interview with The Sun that they had 17 million pieces of letters to sort through.

Without the use of computers, the task had to be completed by hand, every day of the week. There were no franking machines, optical scanning equipment, or even mechanical sorters.

If you have mail containing food parcels that have been languishing in large warehouses for months on end, you can only image what occurs. Many of the mail and packages were crumbling, and rats had chewed through them.

It was a huge undertaking. The Army completed it in 90 days, whereas they had anticipated it taking at least six months.

Black people were prohibited from entering stores, taverns, and restaurants in the United States due to segregation.

In war-torn Birmingham, not so.

The segregated Deep South of America, where racism permeated every aspect of daily life, was significantly different from the Midlands.

White American troops and their superiors, not English people, were the source of the bigotry Major Adams and her soldiers encountered in Britain.

According to Stanley, a 71-year-old finance officer, women were not permitted to enter some stores back in America. There were restaurants, taverns, and stores that were exclusively for white people. They were free to go anywhere they wished and were warmly received in Birmingham and London. That was quite impressive.

Additionally, the British people’s fortitude in the face of constant bombing astonished Major Adams.

According to his son, she had a very favorable opinion of Birmingham. When my mother was invited to tea at the home of a British woman officer, a bomb might detonate close by.

“It didn’t go off here, you heard it over there, so we’re fine,” remarked the British commander coolly. My mom admired their composure in the face of danger.

Although there were occasional issues in the UK, they were mostly caused by American soldiers who carried their problems from home. It would have been unimaginable back home for the women of the 6888th to be allowed into the homes of white people.

Having spent so much time at war, these families had few resources, but they would share what they had.

The efforts of the unglamorous 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was generally overlooked in the innumerable tales of valor that were told during World War Two.

However, to honor the unit’s accomplishments in Birmingham, Woody Johnson, the US Ambassador to the UK, gave King Edward’s School a blue plaque in 2019.

Three years later, the members of the 6888 received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Biden.

Actor Tyler Perry was motivated by the story to write and direct the movie, and Kerry Washington was his initial choice to play Major Charity Adams.

Winner of an Oscar Susan Sarandon plays Eleanor Roosevelt, the humanitarian wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, while Oprah Winfrey consented to make a comeback to the big screen as civil rights crusader Mary McLeod Bethune.

Over my dead body

Many African American women joined the military because to the efforts of Mary and Eleanor.

Charity, who was born in Columbia, South Carolina, had to go north in order to join the Nazi military.

However, despite their desire to sacrifice themselves for their nation, black soldiers and women were still despised.

Stanley, her 71-year-old son, claims that there was racial and sexual segregation when they first arrived in Fort Des Moines.

There were four classes at Officer Candidate School: one for black women, one for white women, one for black men, and one for white men.

Someone finally realized that all of these individuals could be seated in the same lecture.

It resembled a radical notion.

Charity’s leadership abilities were immediately evident, and she was promoted to major very fast. She was discriminated against even then.

When Major Adams informed a general who wanted to assign a white officer to command her regiment about my body, she was threatened with a court-martial.

The matter was quietly abandoned after she brought her own allegations against him. The 6888th relocated to the demolished French town of Rouen in May 1945 following VE Day in order to address yet another massive mail backlog.

After a while, Major Adams went back home and wed Stanley Earley, a trainee physician.

She joined Georgia State College as an assistant professor of education. Both the former Fort Lee army base in Virginia and an all-girls institution in Ohio bear her name.

Director Tyler was able to show an early cut of the film to Lena Derriecott King, 100, who is one of the last survivors of the Six Triple Eight and played by Ebony Obsidian.

According to Tyler, she adored it. At the end she just said, Thank you so much for letting the world know that we contributed .

• The Six Triple Eight is in cinemas from December 6 and Netflix on December 20

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