Understanding Major Charity Adams from Kerry Washington’s Netflix Movie ‘The Six Triple Eight’: Key Facts

Tyler Perry is continuing his foray into drama with a new historical war film, The Six Triple Eight, which is now streaming on Netflix.

Perry wrote and directed The Six Triple Eight, a film adapted from an article by Kevin M. Hymel in a 2019 WWII History magazine. The movie portrays the remarkable account of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, also known as an entirely Black and female battalion that was responsible for distributing mail to troops in World War II.

The star-studded cast includes Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, Sarah Jeffery, Pepi Sonuga, Moriah Brown, Gregg Sulkin, Susan Sarandon, Dean Norris, Sam Waterston and (very briefly) Oprah Winfrey. You’ll no doubt learn a lot about an overlooked chapter of American history from this film, but how much can you trust that The Six Triple Eight is accurate?

Read on to learn more about The Six Triple Eight true story, and the real Major Charity Adams.

The Six Triple Eight is based on the true story of an all-black and all-female battalion in World War II, aka the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. While many of the side characters in the movie were not based on specific real people, the two leads—played by Ebony Obsidian and Kerry Washington—are based on real people.

The script for the movie was adapted from a 2019 article for the Warfare History Network by Kevin M. Hymel, titled “WAC Corporal Lena Derriecott and the 6888th Central Postal Battalion.” You can read the article in full online, which includes a first-hand interview with the protagonist of the film, Lena Derriecott (played by Ebony Obsidian in the movie).

During pre-production, director Tyler Perry had a conversation with the 99-year-old Lena Derriecott King. In an interview for The Six Triple Eight production notes, Perry said that she “blew my mind. Her memory was so sharp,” Perry said. “It was as if she was in the moment as she was telling the stories. At that time she was still driving, still going out and dancing with her friends. To have that opportunity to soak in all that wisdom and hear those truths, it was really, really powerful for me.”

Lena Derriecott King died before the movie’s release, but Perry said he was able to show her a cut of the film while she was still alive. “By then she was in hospice at home, but still very clear, very lucid,” he said. “She knew everything that was happening, and as she was seeing it, she was emotional. She was saluting the screen, and after it was over, she said, “You did it. You nailed every detail, every button, every patch, every moment. I felt like I was right back there.”

While some of the details from the article are faithfully portrayed in the film—like Derriecott being inspired to join the army after her Jewish friend was killed in the line of duty—other details were changed. For example, the real Derriecott didn’t meet Major Charity Adams (played by Kerry Washington) until almost a year into her service. The movie introduces Charity Adams much earlier, to give her a larger character arc.

Charity Adams Earley, aka Major Charity Adams, was the first Black woman to become an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. By the end of World War II, she was the highest-ranking African American woman in the army.

According to Hymel’s article, the real Adams and the real Derriecott were not as close as they are made out to be in the film. However, they did, at least, meet. “She came through, and we were all introduced,” said the real Derriecott in the 2019 article. “I do remember people saying she didn’t get the respect that she should have gotten.”

But though the relationship between the two women was imagined for the movie, Charity Adams was very much a real person, and actor Kerry Washington did her research.

“Charity Adams wrote this beautiful memoir about her time in the Armed Forces, One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC,” Washington said in an interview for the film’s press notes. “I dove into that book and have read it a couple of times.”

Washington also had a chance to talk to one of the surviving members from the battalion who knew Adams. “One of the women, Romay, was actually Charity Adams’ driver in the motor pool,” Washington said in that same interivew. “So, we talked for over an hour. I remember asking her, ‘What was she like? What was her essence? If you had to describe her in one word, what would it be?’ And she said, ‘Kerry, she was herself. Her disposition was leadership.’”

In addition, the production also uncovered an actual trunk of one of the women from the 6888, and it turned out to be a trunk that belonged to the real Adams.

“We looked at the side of the trunk and it said Charity Adams,” Perry explained. “It was her original trunk. Kerry and I got chills. We opened it and it had her uniforms, a twig of a tulip tree, and some of her handwritten notes inside it. It was as if Charity was saying, ‘Okay, I’m with you. I’m leading you through this. Let’s do it.’”