Director Tyler Perry’s compelling, fact-based drama is a painful reminder that heroic deeds can get overlooked, when history is compiled by biased reporters.
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| New enlistees, from left, Dolores (Sarah Jeffery), Lena (Ebony Obsidian), Elaine (Pepi Sonuga) and Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay) nervously wonder what awaits them. |
This was prompted by a bit of political pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt and her close friend, barrier-shattering Black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who tirelessly crusaded for Black women to be allowed a more prominent role in the U.S. military.
Back in July 1942, after having graduating from Ohio’s Wilberforce College — with a triple major in physics, math and Latin, and a minor in history — and then teaching junior high school for four years, Charity Edna Adams enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps. By late 1944, she had risen to the rank of Major, becoming the war’s highest-ranking Black female officer.
She was selected to lead the Six Triple Eight’s 855 women on its overseas assignment: an “impossible” task that some of her blatantly racist white superior officers clearly hoped would prove too much for the battalion.
But that’s getting ahead of things.
Perry and co-scripter Kevin Hymel shine a welcome light on this riveting — and often astonishing — saga, which came to modern attention just a decade ago. (Absent some accidental research, it might have been forgotten entirely.)
Perry’s film is anchored by Kerry Washington’s powerful performance as Major Adams. She’s joined by a solid supporting cast: most notably Ebony Obsidian, as Lena Derriecott King (also an actual WAC).
The story begins stateside with Lena, who has fallen for the white, wealthy and Jewish Abram David (Gregg Sulkin) ... much to her mother’s disapproval and concern. Abram is unfazed; he’s madly in love with Lena, and doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks. But he soon ships out to join the overseas war effort, after which she hears nothing.
No mail from him.
