A Smithsonian magazine special report
The Only Black, All-Female Unit to Serve Overseas in World War II Receives the Congressional Gold Medal
The Six Triple Eight cleared a years-long backlog of mail in just three months. Eighty years later, the unit is finally getting the recognition it deserves
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When Congress voted to bestow its highest honor on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in 2022, only six members of the 855-person World War II unit were still alive.
Due to logistical delays, the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony wouldn’t be held for another three years. By the time it finally took place on April 29, 2025, four of the six surviving members of the unit had died.
The 6888th, also known as the Six Triple Eight, was the only Black, all-female unit to serve overseas in World War II. It was tasked with sorting through a staggering backlog of mail—millions of letters and packages—that had been collecting dust for more than two years.
“So many other units had tried and failed to clear the backlog,” Colonel Edna Cummings, who has pushed for formal recognition of the battalion, told Smithsonian magazine’s Chris Klimek in 2023. “The Army thought it would take at least six months, if at all, to clear the backlog. Six Triple Eight got it done in three months. They cut the processing time by 50 percent.”
On Tuesday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson presented the medal to the family of Charity Adams Earley, the battalion’s commanding officer. According to the Associated Press’ Fernanda Figueroa and Matt Brown, more than 300 descendants of women who served in the unit attended the ceremony at the United States Capitol.
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Quoting an obituary published by the Niagara Gazette in 2021, Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore, who sponsored the legislation, told the audience gathered at the Capitol that the unit’s “work was more than sorting mail. It was ministering to the souls of soldiers, making sure they received that little piece of home that reminded them that they were not forgotten.”
But for many years, history forgot about the Six Triple Eight. The unit received no welcoming ceremony when it returned to the U.S. in early 1946. Despite its overwhelming success, it became a footnote in the history books.
In recent years, however, the Six Triple Eight has started getting the recognition it deserves. The unit received a Meritorious Unit Commendation from the U.S. Armed Forces in 2019. A documentary was released that same year, Smithsonian highlighted the 6888th’s contributions in its March 2023 issue, and a Netflix film written and directed by Tyler Perry followed in 2024.
As word spread, advocates began pushing for Congress to recognize the Six Triple Eight. In 2021 and 2022, legislation to honor the unit with the Congressional Gold Medal passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate and House. Former President Joe Biden signed the bill on March 14, 2022.
The process of designing and manufacturing the medal is time-intensive. But once these steps were finished, the ceremony faced continued delays. In January, a group of 16 senators wrote a letter to Johnson, asking him to perform the ceremony.
“Those still surviving ought to not wait any longer to receive this long-awaited recognition they rightfully deserve,” the senators wrote. “The design and production of the Six Triple Eight Congressional Gold Medal is complete. Therefore, we ask that you swiftly schedule a ceremony to recognize the service these women gave to our nation.”
However, ahead of the event, “supporters had even more reason to grow antsy about the lack of recognition,” writes NPR’s Rachel Treisman.
In January, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to remove references to diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government, the Air Force took down materials about the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, the country’s first Black military pilots, from federal websites. This particular erasure was quickly reversed.
Last month, Arlington National Cemetery’s website stopped prominently featuring the graves of renowned Black, Hispanic and female veterans—including members of the Six Triple Eight. The webpages are still accessible via search, but they are no longer grouped into categories such as “African American History” and “Women’s History.”
“This timing is especially egregious when the country is just starting to appreciate the story of the 6888th,” North Carolina Representative Deborah Ross wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month.
When the Six Triple Eight was deployed in 1945, Black organizations were pushing for the government to include Black women in the Women’s Army Corps, which already enabled white women to serve abroad.
“They kept hollering about wanting us to go overseas so I guess they found something for us to do overseas: Take care of the mail,” 104-year-old Fannie Griffin McClendon, one of the two surviving members of the unit, tells the AP. “And there was an awful lot of mail.”
The unit’s members operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In each of three daily eight-hour shifts, they processed 65,000 pieces of mail. After the war, they replicated their process in Rouen and Paris, France.
“They kept troops connected with their loved ones back home and made America a more perfect union,” wrote Smithsonian’s Jennie Rothenberg Gritz in 2023. Eventually, the Congressional Gold Medal “will hang in the Smithsonian for everyone to see—a mirror for our better selves and a beacon for all the brave girls still to come.”
