Letters

Handwriting love letters seems to be a thing of the past. But I know some of us can remember the bubbly feeling of receiving a “love letter.” As well as the excitement of sending a love letter, spraying that perfume he remembers, and licking that 6-cent first-class stamp in the 1970s, which jumped from 6 cents in 1970 to 15 cents in 1978, representing the single greatest real price increase since America began issuing postage stamps in 1847.

Before that time, the letters’ rates, dates and origins were written by hand, or sometimes in combination with a handstamp device. Today, you can get a “forever” stamp for 73 cents. But it might not be “forever.”

During World War II, which began in 1939 and ended in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, and Mary Jane McLeod Bethune, American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian and civil rights activist, and womanist, met to discuss how to resolve critical issues regarding how they would boost the moral of the troops and their families not getting or receiving mail.

The outcome of that meeting resulted in assigning this duty to an all-Black battalion called the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. Formed by the U.S. Army in late 1944, the unit consisted of 850 Black women across five companies. It was led by Commanding Officer Charity Adams Earley, who was the first Black woman to become an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later, WACs). Early was the highest-ranking Black woman in the Army by the completion of the war.

After President Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency on top of the discrimination and war-torn conditions. President Truman began to target the battalion, harassing and verbally humiliating and belittling them, and threatening to close down the operation if they didn’t complete the task in six months, predicting that the project was doomed to fail.

But, in spite of all, the 6888th all-Black battalion sorted over 17 million pieces of mail ahead of schedule.

Check out Netflix movie “The Six Triple Eight” based on this amazing untold story of heroic efforts of Blacks in this America.

Brenda Simmons

Founder

Southampton African American Museum