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Charity Adams Earley (née Adams; December 5, 1918 – January 13, 2002) was a United States Army officer. She was the first African-American woman to become an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later WACs) and was the commanding officer of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only African-American and multi-ethnic US Women’s Army Corps (WAC) unit sent overseas during World War II. Adams was the highest-ranking African-American woman in the army by the completion of the war.

Key Information

A monument honoring her was dedicated at Fort Lee, Virginia, on November 30, 2018. In 2023, the base was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of Earley and Lieutenant General Arthur J. Gregg, becoming the first U.S. military base to bear the names of African Americans. The base was again renamed in 2025,[1] following Donald Trump's campaign promise to restore the base's Confederate name.[2]

Adams is portrayed by Kerry Washington as a lead character in 2024 film The Six Triple Eight showing the experience of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion during their service in Europe.

Early life and education

[edit]

Adams was born on December 5, 1918, in Kittrell, North Carolina, and grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. Her parents believed strongly in education and were high achievers. Her father, Eugene Adams, a college graduate, was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and her mother, Charity née Nash Adams, was a schoolteacher.[3][4] Adams was the oldest of four children. One of her younger brothers, John Hurst Adams, went on to become a Bishop within the AME and founded the Congress of National Black Churches. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School as valedictorian and from Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1938, majoring in math and physics.[3] Charity Adams Earley was initiated into the Beta chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority while attending Wilberforce University. After graduation, she returned to Columbia, where she taught mathematics at the local high school while studying part-time for a M.A. degree in psychology at the Ohio State University, receiving her master's degree in 1946.

Career

[edit]

Adams enlisted in the U.S. Army's Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in July 1942.[3] She was one of the first African-American women to be an officer in the WAAC. At the time, the U.S. Army was still segregated, so she was placed in a company with fellow female African-American officers and stationed at Fort Des Moines. In 1943, she was assigned to be the training supervisor at base headquarters.

In early 1944, Adams was reassigned as the Training Center control officer in charge of improving efficiency and job training. She also had typical additional duties, such as surveying officer (finding lost property) and summary court officer (handling women's minor offenses).[3]

In December 1944, Adams led the only battalion of Black WACs ever to serve overseas. They were stationed in Birmingham, England. The women began to socialize with the citizens and broke through prejudices on both sides. Adams was put in charge of a postal directory service unit. Another part of her job included raising the morale of women. Adams achieved this by creating beauty parlors for the women to relax and socialize in.[5]

In January 1945, she was appointed the commanding officer of the first battalion of African-American women, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. They were stationed first in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, England. Three months later they were moved to Rouen, France, and then to Paris.[5][6] They were responsible for the delivery of millions of pieces of mail to soldiers during World War II.[7]

By the completion of the war, Lieutenant Colonel Adams was the highest ranking African-American woman in the military.[8] At the conclusion of the war, when asked about her groundbreaking achievements, Adams responded simply: "I just wanted to do my job."[3] After celebrating victory, she left the service in 1946 to continue her education.[5]

Fighting segregation and racism in the Army

[edit]

Growing up in the South, Adams experienced the hardships of segregation. When she entered the Army, she still faced discrimination but was not afraid to speak up and fight for desegregation in the Army. One of the first battles Adams fought for equality was when the Army proposed segregating the training regiment. When she was told she would head one of the segregated regiments, she refused. The Army subsequently decided against creating separate regiments.[3]

On another occasion, when a general stated, "I'm going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit", then-Major Adams responded: "Over my dead body, sir."[6] The general threatened to court-martial her for disobeying orders.[6] She then began to file charges against him for using "language stressing racial segregation" and ignoring a directive from Allied headquarters.[6] They both dropped the matter, and the general later came to respect Adams.[6]

When the Red Cross tried to donate equipment for a new segregated recreation center, Adams refused it because her unit had been sharing the recreation center with white units.[6]

Adams encouraged her battalion to socialize with white men coming back from the front and even the residents of wherever they were stationed. She wanted to create comradeship between enlisted personnel and officers and ease the tensions of racism.[5]

Educator

[edit]

After her service in the Army, she earned a master's degree in psychology from Ohio State University. Next she worked at the Veterans Administration in Cleveland, Ohio, but soon left to teach at the Miller Academy of Fine Arts.[5] She moved to Nashville and was the director of student personnel at Tennessee A&I College. She then moved to Georgia and became the director of student personnel and assistant professor of education at Georgia State College.[3] Later she served on the board of trustees at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.[9] Dayton Public Schools also named one of their schools the "Charity Adams Earley Girls Academy" in her honor.[10]

Community service

[edit]

Adams devoted much of her post-war life to community service. She served on the Board of Directors of Dayton Power and Light, the Dayton Metro Housing Authority, the Dayton Opera Company, the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross, and the Board of Trustees of Sinclair Community College. She volunteered for NAACP, United Way, the United Negro College Fund, the Urban League, and the YWCA.[11] She also co-directed the Black Leadership Development Program.

Personal life

[edit]

In 1949, Adams married Stanley A. Earley Jr. They moved to Zurich, Switzerland for a time while Stanley completed medical school. In Zurich, Earley spent ten months learning German at the Minerva Institute. Once she mastered the language, she studied for two years at the University of Zurich. Earley attended the Jungian Institute of Analytical Psychology in her second year as well, but she chose not to pursue a degree.[12] They returned to the U.S. in 1952 and settled in Dayton[3] where Stanley worked as a physician. They had two children, Stanley III and Judith Earley.

Adams died at age 83 on January 13, 2002, in Dayton.[6]

Awards and honors

[edit]

Adams received many honors and awards, including a Woman of the Year from the National Council of Negro Women in 1946, the Top Ten Women of the Miami Valley Dayton Daily News in 1965, and Service to the Community Award from the Ohio State Senate in 1989. In 1987, she received the Senior Citizens Gold Watch Award. She was listed on the Smithsonian Institution's 110 most important historical Black women list, Black Women Against the Odds, in 1982. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame in 1993. She was also inducted into the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame and named citizen of the year by The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 1991.[3] In 1995, President Clinton gave her public recognition at the groundbreaking of the Military Women's Memorial; located at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, and in 1996, she was honored by the National Postal Museum.[13] In 1997, Adams was included in the BellSouth African-American History Calendar.[3]

She also received honorary doctorates from Wilberforce University and the University of Dayton in 1991. Dayton Public Schools named one of their all-girls elementary schools in her honor (the "Charity Adams Earley Girls Academy"). On March 22, 2022, President Biden signed legislation awarding Charity Adams and the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.

On August 8, 2022, The Naming Commission of the U.S. Department of Defense made recommendations for U.S. Army post name changes for facilities named after Confederate soldiers. Among them was that Fort Lee, Virginia, be redesignated Fort Gregg-Adams, after Lieutenant General Arthur J. Gregg and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Earley.[14] On October 6, 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin accepted the recommendation and directed that the name change occur no later than January 1, 2024.[15] The name change officially occurred on April 27, 2023.[16] The base became the first US military fort named for African Americans.[17] In 2025, Fort Gregg-Adams was renamed Fort Lee. President Donald Trump, who had made a campaign promise to restore the bases' Confederate names,[2] announced that the Army would restore the name to "Fort Robert E. Lee" during a June speech.[18] The fort has officially been renamed in honor of Buffalo Soldier Private Fitz Lee, a Spanish-American War veteran who, under enemy fire, rescued wounded soldiers in Cuba, earning him the Medal of Honor.[19]

In October 2023, the Dayton Branch NAACP honored Lt. Col Charity Adams Earley by implementing The Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley Award of Excellence during its 72nd Dayton NAACP Hall of Freedom Awards. Her daughter, Judi Earley, presented the first award to the Honorable Judge Adele Riley.[20][21]

On June 12, 2024, the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center honored her by renaming their women's clinic as the “Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams-Earley Women’s Clinic."[22]

In the 2024 movie The Six Triple Eight, Adams was portrayed by Kerry Washington.

Works

[edit]
  • Earley, Charity Adams (1989). One Woman's Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 0890963754. OCLC 88020181.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Charity Adams Earley

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from Grokipedia
Charity Adams Earley (December 5, 1918 – January 27, 2002) was an American military officer and educator who became the first African American woman commissioned as an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942. She rose to command the , an all-African American women's unit deployed to during , where her troops processed over seven million pieces of backlogged mail under challenging conditions to boost troop morale. Achieving the rank of by the war's end, she served as the highest-ranking African American woman officer in the U.S. Army during that conflict. Earley's military leadership exemplified discipline and efficiency; her battalion, operating in three shifts around the clock, cleared massive postal delays in , , and , adhering to the motto "No mail, low morale" while facing segregated facilities and resource shortages. She trained initial cohorts of African American WAAC recruits at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, emphasizing and professional standards amid racial barriers within the armed forces. Resigning her commission in 1946, she transitioned to civilian life, earning a in and directing at South Carolina State College before focusing on elementary teaching and school administration. In her later years, Earley contributed to community welfare in , founding a in 1982 to provide vocational training and support for at-risk youth, reflecting her commitment to education and social uplift without reliance on government programs. Her legacy includes posthumous recognition, such as the partial naming of Fort Gregg-Adams in her honor in 2023, acknowledging her pioneering role in integrating and advancing women in military service.

Early Life

Family Background and Childhood

Charity Edna Adams was born on December 5, 1918, in Kittrell, , to Rev. Eugene Avery Adams, a Methodist minister and educator, and Charity Anzella Adams, a former schoolteacher who became a homemaker after marriage. Her father, who had graduated from college and was fluent in multiple languages, served as a civic leader in addition to his pastoral duties. As the eldest of four children, Adams grew up in a of educators that placed strong emphasis on and intellectual development. Her parents, both highly educated, actively instilled values of learning and self-reliance in their children from an early age. The family relocated from Kittrell to , when Adams was young, where she spent her formative years amid the challenges of in the Jim Crow South. Demonstrating early intellectual promise, Adams excelled academically, influenced by her family's commitment to as a pathway to personal and communal advancement.

Education and Pre-War Employment

Adams graduated as valedictorian from High School in , in 1934 at the age of 16, having started formal schooling as a second-grader and advanced two years early. She subsequently enrolled at in , a historically institution, where she earned a in 1938. After completing her undergraduate studies, Adams returned to Columbia and taught and to junior high school students for the next four years, from 1938 to 1942. During this period, she supplemented her professional development by taking summer classes toward a at . This teaching role provided her with practical experience in education amid the constraints of in South Carolina's public schools at the time.

Military Service

Entry into the WAAC and Officer Training

In July 1942, Charity Adams enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the U.S. Army's newly established women's auxiliary unit formed to support the war effort by filling non-combat roles. Selected for officer candidacy due to her educational background as a recent holder in from , Adams reported to Fort , the site of the first WAAC Officer Candidate School (OCS) class for African American women, reflecting the Army's segregated structure at the time. The training program at Fort Des Moines emphasized , skills, and administrative duties tailored to auxiliary service, lasting approximately two months for the inaugural class. On August 29, 1942, Adams graduated from OCS and received her commission as a , marking her as the first African American woman to achieve officer status in the WAAC. This milestone occurred amid broader efforts to integrate black women into the military auxiliaries, though initial recruitment faced resistance due to prevailing racial policies. Following commissioning, she remained at Fort Des Moines to assist with subsequent training cycles, contributing to the development of protocols for incoming WAAC personnel.

Command of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

In December 1944, Major Charity Adams was selected to command the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the first and only all-African American Women's Army Corps unit deployed overseas during World War II, tasked with clearing a massive backlog of undelivered mail that had accumulated in the European Theater and threatened troop morale. The battalion consisted of 855 enlisted women and officers, drawn from volunteers across WAC detachments, and underwent specialized training in postal operations before deployment. The unit sailed from New York on February 3, 1945, aboard the SS Île de France, with the first contingent arriving in , , and proceeding by train to Birmingham, , by February 15. A second group joined on April 1, bringing the to full strength, after which Adams formally assumed command on March 2. In Birmingham's unheated, poorly lit warehouses, the women operated in three rotating eight-hour shifts daily, sorting and routing up to 65,000 pieces of per shift—including letters, packages, and censored items—while adhering to Adams' , "No mail, low morale." Under her direction, they cleared a six-month backlog of 17 million items in just three months, exceeding efficiency goals and restoring vital communication links for U.S. forces. After V-E Day, the battalion relocated to , , in June 1945, where they processed additional undelivered mail with assistance from French civilians, before a brief posting in starting October 1945. Adams maintained rigorous , ensuring unit self-sufficiency, equal treatment within the segregated command structure, and high performance despite external skepticism from male officers and institutional racial barriers, such as limited facilities and slanderous rumors. The mission concluded successfully by early 1946, with the unit returning to the in February, having delivered morale-boosting correspondence ahead of schedule. In recognition of her leadership, Adams was promoted to upon stateside reassignment.

Encounters with Segregation and Institutional Discrimination

During her service in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later redesignated the in 1943, Charity Adams encountered institutionalized , as the U.S. military maintained separate facilities, units, and quotas for Black servicewomen in accordance with prevailing Jim Crow policies. Black women were capped at 10 percent of WAC enrollment, a limit reflecting broader institutional reluctance to integrate or expand opportunities for , despite their meeting or exceeding qualification standards. Adams, commissioned as a third officer (equivalent to ) on August 4, 1942, at Fort —the only site for Black WAAC officer training—experienced this through segregated barracks and training protocols, where Black candidates were processed by platoon rather than alphabetically, delaying her formal recognition despite ranking first in her class. As commander of the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, deployed to in February 1945, Adams faced overt skepticism and prejudice from white who doubted the legitimacy of officers, with some expressing disbelief upon encountering her rank and authority overseas. Her operated in segregated conditions, including separate housing in Birmingham, , where they sorted backlog around the clock despite inadequate facilities and equipment, yet institutional biases persisted in duty assignments, as Black WACs were frequently directed toward menial roles rather than skilled positions matching their training. In one notable confrontation during an , a implied the battalion's mail-processing speed was inadequate compared to white units and threatened to replace Adams with a white ; Adams retorted, "Over my dead body, sir," prepared to counter any by charging the general with violating segregation regulations himself, ultimately compelling an apology and retreat. Adams also navigated discrimination from affiliated organizations, such as the , which initially provided segregated accommodations like a separate hotel in for her arriving officers; she refused to utilize it, directing her troops to integrated options to challenge the practice and uphold . Travel en route to further highlighted institutional humiliations, including segregated train cars with improvised barriers separating and white servicewomen. These encounters underscored a pattern of scrutiny and underestimation directed at Black WAC units, yet Adams consistently advocated for equitable treatment, ensuring her battalion's performance—clearing 17 million pieces of in —countered prejudiced assumptions through demonstrable efficiency.

Discharge and Immediate Post-War Transition

Following the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion's return to the aboard the Claymont Victory on February 27, 1946, the unit was disbanded on March 9, 1946, at , . Adams, who had been promoted to on December 26, 1945—the highest rank attainable for a officer—oversaw the disbandment before a brief assignment to . In 1946, she requested relief from and received an honorable discharge later that month. Upon discharge, Adams was honored with a Scroll of Honor from the for her wartime leadership, recognizing her command of the only all-African American unit deployed overseas. She immediately resumed her interrupted graduate studies at , completing a in in just three academic quarters by late 1946 or early 1947. This swift academic completion facilitated her entry into civilian employment with the Veterans Administration in , , where she applied her military-honed administrative skills to postwar veteran support roles. Concurrently, Adams began public speaking engagements recounting her experiences with the 6888th, highlighting operational challenges and institutional barriers faced by African American servicewomen, though these invitations underscored limited formal recognition from military or government entities at the time.

Civilian Career

Advanced Education and Academic Positions

Following her discharge from the military in 1946, Adams Earley completed a degree in at , where she had begun graduate studies prior to her wartime service. This advanced degree equipped her for roles in educational administration and counseling, building on her pre-war experience teaching and . In the late 1940s, Adams Earley served as director of student personnel services at , a historically Black institution in Nashville, where she oversaw counseling, placement, and student welfare programs. She later held a similar position, combined with duties as an of , at Georgia State College (now ), focusing on student development and academic support amid the era's in higher education. These administrative roles highlighted her expertise in vocational guidance, informed by her military leadership and psychological training, though exact tenures remain undocumented in primary records.

Community Leadership and Organizational Roles

Following her discharge from the military in 1946, Earley dedicated significant efforts to in , and later , volunteering with organizations focused on education, urban development, and . She contributed to the United Negro College Fund, which supports historically Black colleges and universities; the Urban League, aimed at advancing economic and social parity for ; the , promoting women's leadership and community programs; and , coordinating philanthropic initiatives. In 1982, Earley founded the Black Leadership Development Program in Columbia, an initiative designed to equip young with skills for community leadership and , reflecting her commitment to fostering self-reliance and organizational capacity among Black youth. Earley held governance positions across multiple institutions, including service on the Board of Governors for the , which oversees and . She also sat on the Board of Trustees for local colleges and various boards of directors, leveraging her experience to influence policy and in educational and community sectors.

Personal Life

Marriage, Family, and Domestic Responsibilities

In 1949, Charity Adams married Stanley A. Earley Jr., a fellow U.S. Army who pursued medical training after the war. The couple relocated to Zurich, , following the marriage, where Adams supported her husband's studies to become a physician while adapting to life abroad. Upon returning to the , they settled in , in the early 1950s, establishing a home that became the center of their domestic life. Adams and Earley raised two children, Stanley III and Judith, emphasizing values of service and in their upbringing. Throughout this period, Adams balanced parental duties with active involvement in community and civic roles, including board service for local organizations, while her husband practiced medicine in Dayton. This integration of family obligations and public engagement reflected her post-military transition, though specific details on daily household management remain limited in available records.

Later Years, Health Issues, and Death

Following her marriage to Stanley A. Earley Jr. on August 24, 1949, the couple resided briefly in Zurich, Switzerland, from 1949 to 1952 while he completed medical training before settling permanently in Dayton, Ohio, in 1952, where they raised two children, Stanley III and Judith. In her later years, Earley focused on family while sustaining community engagement, including founding the Black Leadership Development Program in Dayton in 1982 to cultivate African American leadership. Charity Adams Earley died on January 13, 2002, in Dayton, Ohio, at the age of 83. She was interred alongside her husband in Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Section 308, Lot 326.

Writings

Memoir and Autobiographical Works

Charity Adams Earley published her memoir One Woman's Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC in 1989, providing a firsthand account of her military service and the broader context of Black women's roles in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. The book traces her path from childhood in segregated Columbia, South Carolina, where she was born on December 5, 1918, to her education at South Carolina State College, and her entry into the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942 as one of the first Black women officers commissioned at the rank of third officer. Earley recounts her rapid promotions, culminating in her command of the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, which processed over 17 million pieces of backlogged mail in England, France, and Germany between 1945 and 1946, often under harsh conditions including bombed-out facilities and limited resources. In the memoir, Earley addresses institutional discrimination candidly, including segregated training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, where Black officer candidates endured inferior housing and facilities compared to white counterparts, and her clashes with Army brass over policies that perpetuated racial separation, such as a 1945 incident in Birmingham, England, where she refused to allow a general's photographer to depict her unit in a misleadingly diminished light. She emphasizes the unit's discipline and efficiency—sorting mail at a rate of up to 65,000 pieces per shift despite working in three eight-hour rotations around the clock—and credits the battalion's success to rigorous selection and training that prioritized merit over racial stereotypes. Earley also reflects on post-war demobilization challenges, including the military's reluctance to integrate and the abrupt discharge of Black servicewomen amid broader societal resistance to racial equality. The 218-page work, originally issued by the University of Massachusetts Press, was reprinted in 1995 by Texas A&M University Press (ISBN 978-0-89096-694-5) to reach a wider audience, maintaining its focus on personal resilience amid systemic barriers without embellishment or external advocacy narratives. While not commercially blockbuster, the has been cited in historical analyses for its unvarnished primary-source insights into the intersection of race, , and military efficacy, informing later works on the and desegregation precedents. No other autobiographical writings by Earley are documented, though her oral histories, such as a 1990s interview preserved by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, echo similar themes of leadership under adversity.

Recognition and Legacy

Military and Civilian Awards

Earley received several standard U.S. Army service medals for her tenure, including the Women's Army Corps Service Medal, , European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and . Upon her honorable discharge on March 10, 1946, she was presented a Scroll of Honor by the for distinguished military service. Her civilian honors encompassed inductions into multiple halls of fame and community service recognitions. In 1965, the named her one of the Top Ten Women of the Miami Valley. She was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame in 1979, the Black Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame in 1993. Additional accolades included the Smithsonian Institution's 1982 "Black Women Against the Odds" recognition, an honorary doctorate from and the in 1991, and a Service to the Community Award from the State in 1989. In 1996, the Smithsonian National honored her for leadership of the . Posthumously, the 6888th Battalion under her command was awarded the on March 22, 2022—the highest U.S. civilian honor—via legislation explicitly naming Earley alongside the unit for their service in clearing European mail backlogs. Her family accepted the medal on her behalf during a Capitol ceremony. In 2023, Fort Lee was redesignated Fort Gregg-Adams in her honor, recognizing her as the first Black woman to command an overseas-deployed .

Long-Term Impact on Military Integration and Women's Roles

Adams Earley's leadership of the all-African American in Europe during exemplified the capabilities of in demanding overseas assignments, directly challenging institutional segregation by proving operational effectiveness under combat conditions. Her unit's success in clearing massive backlogs of undelivered mail—processing over 65,000 pieces daily despite resource shortages and harsh environments—demonstrated discipline and efficiency that undermined arguments against integrating Black service members. This performance contributed empirical evidence to post-war desegregation efforts, influencing the broader momentum leading to President Truman's on July 26, 1948, which mandated equality of treatment in the armed forces regardless of race. As the highest-ranking African American woman officer in the Army during the war, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1945, Earley established a precedent for Black women's advancement in military hierarchies previously dominated by white male leadership. Her insistence on equal training standards and resistance to discriminatory assignments for her units fostered a model of merit-based command that extended beyond WWII, informing the transition of the Women's Army Corps into the regular Army in 1948 and subsequent expansions of women's combat and leadership roles. By 1975, when the Army opened more technical and administrative positions to women, Earley's wartime record served as a foundational example of proven competence, helping to normalize integrated units where Black women could serve alongside white counterparts without quotas or separate facilities. Her legacy reinforced causal links between demonstrated performance and policy reform, as her battalion's achievements were cited in military reviews as countering segregationist rationales rooted in presumed inferiority. This empirical validation accelerated the erosion of barriers, contributing to the full integration of women into all occupational specialties by the 1990s, with African American women comprising a growing proportion of officers—rising from under 5% in the 1940s to over 20% by the early 2000s. Earley's post-service advocacy through her One Woman's (1989) further documented these dynamics, emphasizing how individual unit successes drove systemic change without relying on ideological appeals.

References

  1. https://www.nps.gov/people/charityadams.htm
  2. https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/charity-adams-earley/
  3. https://www.army.mil/article/267679/historical_sustainment_leaders_honored_with_gregg_adams_redesignation
  4. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/charity-earley
  5. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L1ZJ-XFF/charity-edna-adams-1918-2002
  6. https://www.richlandlibrary.com/blog/2023-04-28/local-woman-charity-adams-recognized
  7. https://militaryhallofhonor.com/honoree-record.php?id=3193
  8. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61205558/charity_edna-earley
  9. https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/01/20/80-years-later-movie-tells-story-of-sc-womans-battalion-during-world-war-ii/
  10. https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/charity-earley-1918-2002/
  11. https://cafriseabove.org/charity-adams-earley/
  12. https://dvs.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/dvs/hall-of-fame/honorees/hof-honorees/charity-e-earley
  13. https://www.womenofthe6888th.org/charity-adams-earley
  14. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/colonel-charity-adams-6888th-commanding-officer
  15. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/6888th.htm
  16. https://www.army.mil/article/181382/sorting_the_mail_blazing_a_trail_african_american_women_in_wwii
  17. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/438848/army-lt-col-adams-pioneer-worthy-commemoration
  18. https://inspire.ehe.osu.edu/2025/02/17/the-story-behind-the-6888ths-extraordinary-leader/
  19. https://armyhistory.org/6888th-central-postal-directory-battalion/
  20. https://www.sinclairclarion.com/home/tartan-news/2025/03/25/charity-earley-a-way-maker-in-times-of-hardship/
  21. https://scafricanamerican.com/honorees/lt-col-charity-edna-adams-earley/
  22. https://www.freemansrag.com/historical-ruminations/charity-adams-early-teacher-and-leader-of-women
  23. https://foundationforwomenwarriors.org/charity-adams-earley-lieutenant-colonel-u-s-army-ret/
  24. https://www.daytonfoundation.org/Charity-and-Stanley-Earley
  25. https://woodlandcemetery.org/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/2024/07/A-Woodland-Minute-02182024-Lt.-Charity-Adams-Earley.pdf
  26. https://books.google.com/books/about/One_Woman_s_Army.html?id=8NzUzMhwuskC
  27. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-black-all-female-wwii-unit-saved-morale-on-the-battlefield-180981540/
  28. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172126808/fort-gregg-adams-army-fort-lee
  29. https://www.tamupress.com/book/9780890966945/one-womans-army/
  30. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/oral-history-with-charity-adams-earley
  31. https://www.army.mil/article/285120/army_reserve_ambassador_catalyst_for_congressional_gold_medal
  32. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/Jan-Feb-2019/Warrington-Mail/
  33. https://turner.house.gov/2024/8/turner-beatty-propose-commemorative-stamp-for-wwii-trailblazer-lt-col-charity-adams-earley
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