The Six Triple Eight helped rewrite the rules on who could be a soldier – the real story behind the Netflix film

Tyler Perry’s new Netflix film, The Six Triple Eight, tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion of the US Women’s Army Corps (WACs). These women, who were mostly African American, were sent to Britain in February 1945. Their goal was to boost morale by clearing a backlog of undelivered mail for the American troops fighting in Europe.

The film powerfully brings the story of these women, and the racism they encountered, to a wider audience. But it has received criticism from some reviewers for stereotypical characterisation and histrionic acting. Although there is an emphasis on the sisterhood of the unit and occasional nods to the sexism they experienced, the film largely misses the way this intersected with racism.

This was a subject the real commander of the 6888th, Charity Adams Earley (played in the film by Kerry Washington), gave more attention in her autobiography, One Woman’s Army (1995). As Adams Earley saw it, resentment towards the 6888th was “doubled” because they were a majority black, all-female unit serving overseas in a major theatre of war.

But the way these women handled the intersecting challenges of racism and sexism helped transform America’s notion of who could be a soldier.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

It wasn’t only the women of the 6888th who experienced racism during the war. Black nurses and American Red Cross volunteers in Britain had similar experiences.

But because their positions conformed to more traditional caring roles expected of women by American society in the 1940s, they were deemed less threatening to the military hierarchy than the WACs, who interposed women into the traditionally male identity of soldiers.

For this reason, the WACs faced significant opposition to posting any women overseas. Yet there were eventually 8,000 WACs stationed in Europe during the war. The approximately 855 women of the 6888th joined them after a considerable black political and press campaign in the US (Oprah Winfrey appears in the film as campaigner Mary McLeod Bethune).

There was less than a warm welcome for the WACs from some male soldiers, who did not want to be replaced by women soldiers as it might mean them being sent to the front lines.

This was equally true of how some black soldiers received the women. In her book, Adams Earley observed how “Negro males had been systematically degraded” and the “presence of successfully performing Negro women on the scene increased their resentment”.

But the only significant male black character in the film, the lovelorn Private Hugh Bell (Jay Reeves), demonstrates none of this duality in his pursuit of Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian). The one hint of any complexity is in a bar scene with Adams when her executive officer, Noel Campbell (Milauna Jackson), complains about “these white men … these Negro men too”.

Opposition to the female soldier

Back home in the US, rumours abounded as to the “true purpose” of the WACs. In 1943, a public “slander campaign”, driven by those unhappy with the idea of female soldiers, gave a false impression of the real mission of the WACs.

The whispering suggested they were to be morale-boosting sex workers for the men overseas. The 6888th certainly encountered this rumour. Adams Earley wrote that the women heard black soldiers say: “You can all just go back to the States, we get ours from white girls now.”

Perry’s film misses an opportunity to tackle these issues directly. Instead, it concentrates on another real event – the arrival of a chaplain at the 6888th who preached a sermon against the leadership of Adams Earley. She ordered the chaplain, who was known to her father as a fellow member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, to leave.

Women becoming soldiers also threatened contemporary ideas of femininity, appearing to their critics to replace ideas of beauty, care-giving, nurturing and homemaking with a uniform masculinity. This led to an emphasis on retaining “feminine virtues” via a beauty parlour established by the 6888th. In the film, this draws the racist ire of General Halt (Dean Norris) during his inspection of their base.

In reality, the military and WAC hierarchy approved of such efforts to maintain conventional notions of femininity, though Adams Earley noted this was not something the army provided for African American women.

Ultimately, it led to a negative obsession with homosexuality and “mannish behaviour” among the women by the US army’s higher command. This undoubtedly existed, but in her book Adams Earley makes clear her disdain for this obsession. She discusses the “chore” of this focus, because it never impaired the performance of the unit.

The story of 6888th in Britain, and later in France, is one of transcending entrenched racism, but also one of confronting the challenges of sexism in the military.

In their conduct, the 6888th contributed to a redefinition of who could be a soldier that would eventually lead to the desegregation of the US Armed Forces by Executive Order 9981 in July 1948. The WACs were fully integrated into the army in 1978.

This combination of service and the 6888th’s clear success against combined racism and sexism was best articulated by Adams Earley, who believed she “survived in a state of pleasant belligerency. I had no chip on my shoulder; I kept it slightly below the shoulder.”

Graham Cross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.