Senator Jerry Moran: Today, it's easy to connect with our loved ones through texts and emails or social media.

Communications is more convenient and consequently, many of us take the ease of that communication for granted.

But during World War II, the only connection people like my mom and dad had while my father was deployed in Europe was our mail system.

Janice Martin: We took mail for granted, and that line of communication was all that that generation had.

And when you talk about it today and you say mail, it really doesn't have that same impact.

But when you put yourself back in that time period and understand that that was their only way of communicating, I used to see movies when they say mail call, you know, it just went over me then.

Now when I see them in the movies where they say mail call, I just get all choked up because I said, "These are the letters that these ladies help get to these guys that are in these foxholes up front dying.

Molly Sampson: Part of the problem was they were not looking at how we could fix the problems occurring in the mail, and while they understood the importance of mail communication, I don't think they understood it in the concept of morale.

Eisenhower throughout his career was very focused on the morale of his troops.

He was very, very like, "The Army is not just machines, it's not just on paper, it's emotional as well."

So he understood the need to keep RGIs in touch with their family at home, like if we can keep that lifeline going, we can keep them motivated to keep fighting.

speaker 1: General Eisenhower, who knew that if soldiers aren't getting mail, morale is going to be low, and loved ones on the home front are not receiving any information or mail from their loved ones, it creates a morale issue on both ends.

Molly: So the Six Triple Eight was really fighting a triple victory.

We're very familiar with the double victory campaign.

However, the intersectionality of their identities as Black women who are also in the military meant that they were fighting a war on three fronts.

The WAC as a whole was fighting for recognition from their male counterparts, from the public.

They were also fighting the racism inherent in American society at the time, and then they were also fighting for democracy and freedom, as everyone else was during World War II.

Charity Adams Earley: Amazingly, many people have a great difficulty believing that Black troops, whether women or men, were there and patriotic.

Many of them were very patriotic and they are there to win the war.

When the war was over, they had done their duty and they wanted to go back home.

Col. Edna Cummings: The story about the Six Triple Eight is much broader than mail, than sorting and routing mail.

It's about what it took to navigate a system that was segregated by race, legally segregated, Jim Crow laws.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker 2: She needs no introduction, the ever-present autograph seekers and Mary McLeod Bethune is gracious.

Mrs. Bethune is off to the San Francisco conference as a special consultant.

Molly: Mary McLeod Bethune had a strong background in education.

She actually founded her own college in Daytona Beach, Florida, and through the 1930s had developed a close relationship with the Roosevelts by serving on several federal committees and panels.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong champion of Bethune, and Bethune worked very, very hard through these federal panels, through the National Council of Negro Women to help find new opportunities for Black women to participate more fully in American society.

@Janice: When she saw theúarticle with Mary McLeod Bethune and Mrs. Roosevelt, that this was probably something good and she needed to be part of it.

Edna: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, who was an adviser to the president, advocated says, "We want African American women to go overseas in meaningful roles."

Eleanor Roosevelt: The real change which must give to people throughout the world their human rights, must come about in the hearts of people.

We must want our fellow human beings to have rights and freedoms.

Molly: When discussions and pre-planning had started for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1941 and into 1942, Bethune was part of the pre-planning.

They wanted her opinion on how to best handle the 10% of Black women that would be allowed to join the Corps.

Edna: They were dubbed the 10 percenters because only 10% of the women in the military could be African American, so it was a quota system even then.

Molly: Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was segregated from the get-go as an auxiliary of the Army and then later once they dropped their auxiliary status, they were under the same rules and conditions and regulations as the US Army was.

Due to a 1920s study by the Army War College, the study of the employment of Negro troops, there was a cap set on the total percentage of how many Black members of the army there could be and therefore also the WAC.

And this cap was set at a proportional relation to the population at large of 10.6%, and it was more commonly called "The 10% Rule."

So as we have the first WAC training classes starting in July of 1942, we have 440 women going to these training classes, 400 of them are white WAC, 40 of them are Black WAC.

Edna: And one thing about the Six Triple Eight was designated as African American, but there was a lot of ethnicities, had Afro-Latina, Afro-Caribbean, and you had biracial women, but they had to check the Black box because of the one drop rule.

Molly: So Bethune, because she could not enlist in the WAC, sent her assistant from the National Council of Negro Women, Harriet West, to enlist.

West was part of that first 440 class, and she was also part of the initial group of 18 women to be sent from Fort Des Moines to WAC headquarters in DC in early fall of 1942.

She was kind of Bethune's ears on the ground to help continue her influence.

speaker 3: Thousands of WACs trained and disciplined the army way are now on duty all over this country and overseas, but thousands more are needed.

Women from all walks of life, salesgirls, industrial workers, librarians, housewives, entertainers, office workers, executives, designers, teachers, college women, women of all races.

Edna: The Black women in the Women's Army Corps were having a really hard time.

They're being spat on, court martialed, beaten and imprisoned for standing up for civil rights.

Janice: But come to Buffalo, that's where I enlisted, but then they didn't take care of the papers.

She waited a couple of weeks, they said they hadn't heard anything.

So she said, "Well, send it to New York.

I'm going to go stay with my mom."

So she goes to New York and she waits another couple weeks.

Altogether I think she says she was cheated out of maybe three months of being in the military because it took her that long to finally get in, but when she was in New York, she goes down to the enlisting office, they have no papers.

They don't even know what she's talking about, but they said you can enlist here, and within a week they sent her papers telling her to report.

Charity: Strangely, I applied from South Carolina, but I went in from Columbus, Ohio because the army didn't answer me fast enough and I went on back to graduate school.

Molly: The segregation was not universal in the United States at this time.

It really was not as universal in the north and one of the most famous accounts of finally hitting this segregation in the Army is from Charity Adams Earley and she discusses in her autobiography that, you know, she enlists in Ohio because she's attending Ohio State University at the time, and she boards the bus there and everything's fine, fully integrated from the bus to the train.

And then once they get to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, even though Iowa is considered a free state, it was, you know, part of the north, as soon as they get on base, they are immediately segregated and all of the Black women are sent to one side of the room and all the white women are sent to the other side of the room.

Charity: When we all jumped out of those trucks, at Des Moines at the back of those trucks, we were marched into a staging center, a reception center, I guess it wasn't that, we had to learn the terms, the reception center, and the first thing that took place was literally a shock to us.

There had been 25 of us who had traveled together from Columbus, Ohio and an officer came in and asked if the colored girls would move over to some seats he had way over in the corner.

Molly: While they are at Fort Oglethorpe for overseas training, she was warned ahead of time by her XO, Abby Noel Campbell, her unit had been moved from Camp Forest down to Fort Oglethorpe and she said, hey, "You know, like we're in the Jim Crow South here at Fort Oglethorpe.

The post commandant is not the most friendly, like we'd have to stay above approach."

Janice: That was the main place that she talks about is Fort Oglethorpe and then going through Washington DC and encountering her first, which she considered her first firsthand experience with the racial discrimination when they asked the white gentleman that was sitting with them in the back to leave the area and go to the front.

And he couldn't understand what was going on and she was just kind of shocked.

Edna: One veteran in Arizona talks about when she got on the train and the white officers had to separate from the Black officers.

Janice: They didn't change trains, they just made them, they said, "We're now in Washington.

The white people have to sit up front and remember the signs that say white and Black.

If you get off to get something, the water fountain for whites and water fountain for Blacks," just reminding them of the rules because you're heading south.

Maj. Gen. Mark T. Simerly: Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams grew up in the segregated South and endured the daily oppression of the Jim Crow laws.

In July of 1942, she and 439 other women arrived-at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

To attend the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, very first officer candidate school.

Edna: Major Charity Edna Adams was the first African American woman to receive a commission as a member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942.

And Major Charity Adams, one thing about her, several things about her, she was a highly educated, intelligent woman.

Mark: She proved an exceptional student, graduating at the age of 15 as class valedictorian and earning a scholarship to Wilberforce University.

After college she returned to Columbia to teach high school science and math.

Molly: It was just o n paper so amazing and because of hergraduate school background, she also had a strong background in teaching, because you teach your way through graduate school, that made her the perfect training officer.

Edna: So, at 26 years old, she was selected to be a Battalion Commander.

Battalion commanders now are in their 40s, they've been in the military probably about 15, 16 years.

So, a 26-year old woman selected to lead a group of 855 African American women overseas on an unknown mission.

Janice: My understanding, they didn't know what their job was.

When they left to go, they were told since it was a secret mission and no one knew what the job was, they just knew they were volunteering.

Once they were there, they were told that they had to get the mail in order.

The people in the European theater of operations had not been receiving mail for over two years.

speaker 4: You knew it was the 6888?

Charity: No, not then, I didn't know what it was.

Captain Noel Campbell and I was sent over a couple of weeks ahead of the troops to get things ready for them, and it wasn't until, and they sent us to, we thought we were going to Paris.

@And we opened our seal ordersúone hour after we were in flight and found that we were going to London.

Molly: The postal station that the Six Triple Eight would be assigned to had actually been in operation since 1943.

First base post office in Birmingham, England had initially been established to process mail, mostly for the 8th Air Force, the earliest units we had stationed in England during that time.

Edna: Now there was a small post office there because other units had tried and failed to clear the backlog.

There was no formal training in postal operations, and that's something that's not really discussed.

You get a group of 855 women, you deploy overseas, not only do you have to sort mail, you have to set up a small city.

Because it's a segregated environment, you have to repair your own vehicles, cook your own food, style your own hair, clean your own barracks.

Mark: When the Red Cross built a separate recreational facility for Black soldiers, Adams asked for soldiers to boycott the facility, and they complied.

Charity: The Red Cross wanted to segregate us, and the British just wanted to visit us and see what was going on.

But I refused to accept any segregated facilities that they wanted to create for them and after that they didn't try.

Molly: So how the postal system worked is you have a first base post or a base post office that is a feeder to your individual units from there.

So, this is not like if the mail is at first base post office, it's going to get put directly into the hands of the recipient.

It's we sort it from here, so it's a regional distribution center basically, and then from there it gets sent to the head units and then the subunits, and then you have the regimental mail clerks working their way down from there.

So, this is just high level sorting and if you get a letter that just says "Junior" of the three million people we have in theater that we can possibly deliver mail to, how do you deliver that?

Janice: Whether people in the European theater of operations had not been receiving mail for over two years and there were sacks of mail from floor to ceiling, at least another eight or nine hangers filled with mail.

The women were kind of shocked because they couldn't believe and had no clue how this was going to be handled.

Molly: They were given six months to clear this two year backlog of mail that had accumulated.

And it was kind of a set up to fail, like, you know, we have all of these people haven't been able to do it in two years.

We have to give you this opportunity, so fine, you have six months.

Charity Adams Earley goes, "All right, like I realize that you're kind of setting me up to fail here, but I'm not going to give you that satisfaction."

So, she goes through and says 20 hours, no, not long enough, let's do a 24 hour work day.

So that's when you get to the three, eight hour shift system.

And then they look at the locator cards and they realize that these have not been an area of focus that they could be.

So she prioritizes updating those, clearing out those records, making sure everything updated.

A locator card is assigned to each individual and it has your name, your serial number, your unit, and the location of your unit.

As you get transferred from unit to unit, it should get updated along with the APO.

If you get injured and sent back to hospital, it should get updated.

And these are supposed to be updated very, very quickly, almost immediately.

Well, Clausewitz, fog of war, friction happens, this is a friction point, they don't get updated as quickly.

So Adams tasks a subgroup of the battalion to work specifically on the locator cards.

They divide the alphabet up and everybody gets a subsection of the alphabet.

Some of them one letter, some of them part of a letter, some of them multiple letters depending on how many people there are with that last name.

And then they go from there and they start updating these and then they look at the mail and they start using context clues from the packages if the mail's been too damaged or if it's not addressed correctly.

There's a very specific way to address military mail and it's name, serial number, rank, unit, and then APO.

Charity: We worked three shifts, eight hours a day, and we did get a commendation for delivering that mail at top speed.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker 5: I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government in reply to the message forwarded to that government by the Secretary of State on August 11th.

I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Edna: The Six Triple Eight after doing great things in Europe to improve the morale of the troops there, came home to Jim Crow America.

Janice: Well, when World War II ended and she returned home from France and because she couldn't sign up in Niagara Falls, she had to sign up in New York, they gave her a subway token to get home.

Molly: But the Six Triple Eight came home to mixed greetings.

Much like some of their other WAC counterparts, they are looked down upon by GIs who maybe thought they deserved the opportunity to go overseas, and then they also have the inherent racism of mid-20th century America on top of that.

So it was not the warm cheering welcome that you think of when you think of the end of World War II.

There was no big ticker-tape parade for them.

They were demobilized, they were given their discharge papers and they were sent home to kind of fend for themselves from that point on.

Janice: I want them to be heard and be seen.

I just want people to know that they left their homes, they left their families to go do a job that they had no idea they were going to be doing.

And they did it and they did it very well, wanting to help their country and help not only their country but to help, and wanted to be respected.

Molly: I think the morale shift that they enacted because they were able to clear this backlog and able to streamline so much of the mail services, really did positively impact the end of the war, helped them move it along faster, helped re-energize our forces to achieve victory.

Janice: And I just wanted her legacy to stand, that these women stood for something.

Edna: When President Biden signed the bill to give the Six Triple Eight Congressional Gold Medal, I felt like it was the first step to ensure that their legacy is preserved.

Jerry: The passage of the Six Triple Eight Congressional Gold Medal Act.

The passage of this legislation is long overdue and will award the Congressional Gold Medal to these brave women of the Six Triple Eight for their devotion to duty, military service, and their extraordinary efforts to boost the morale of personnel stationed in Europe during World War II.

Edna: No, I'm never satisfied.

I'm content but not complacent.

I think for the Six Triple Eight, it'll be great for family members to know the history because so many of the Six Triple Eight and women veterans period during that era did not talk about the service, especially African American women, because it was not something that ladies, you know, ladies didn't join the military.

So it's such a stigma associated and the family members now are just learning the history.

Janice: It was just overwhelming to see that this is the role that these ladies played and no one ever really gave them any credit for it until recently.

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