The only all-Black, all-female Army battalion to serve in Europe during World War II was awarded Congress’s highest honor on Tuesday, in a celebration of the type of diversity that has come under assault by the Trump administration.
The unit, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion — known as the Six Triple Eight — deployed to England in 1945 to clear a backlog of 17 million letters and packages. The mail was considered critical to maintaining U.S. soldiers’ morale during some of the most grueling and bloody chapters of the war.
The members of the 855-woman battalion were given six months to complete the mission, knowing that if they failed — as some military leaders believed they would — the future of Black women in the military might be doomed. They finished in three, working around the clock, processing up to 65,000 pieces of mail in each eight-hour shift, and creating a card-based index of over seven million military serial numbers to ensure that mail addressed to people with similar names would go to the correct recipient.
Today, the battalion has only two surviving members: Fanny McClendon, 101, and Anna Mae Robertson, 104. While they watched from home, about 300 descendants of members of the battalion gathered in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall — named after the enslaved people who helped construct the building — to witness a ceremony honoring the unit’s legacy.
“We’re honored to host you and to celebrate these exceptional women,” Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who is a close ally of President Trump, said as he presented the award to the descendants of Lt. Col. Charity Adams, who as an Army major led the 6888th Battalion.
“What a testament this is to the enduring impact of the remarkable women we honor today,” he added.
Over the last several decades, the battalion and Colonel Adams have been recognized in various ways. Most prominently, an Army installation in Virginia named for the general who led the Confederate Army during the Civil War was renamed in 2023 in honor of Colonel Adams and another African American military leader.
Congress created a Naming Commission in 2021 as part of an annual defense bill, tasking it with divining a plan to remove Confederate names from Defense Department assets, including military bases.
But the effort to recognize the 6888th Battalion with Congress’s highest honor was a yearslong struggle that only recently came to fruition.
The medal for the battalion was approved by statute in 2022, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. The bipartisan legislation that ultimately cemented the award was written by a Republican senator, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and passed both chambers of Congress unanimously.
At the ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Moran described the women of the 6888th as “soldiers who went above and beyond their duty.”
“They broke barriers that should never have existed and defied odds that were stacked against them,” he said, adding that the medal was part of an effort to give the women the respect and recognition they deserved during their lifetimes.
There was little mention of how the Trump administration, particularly the Pentagon, has rolled back similar efforts in recent months.
Almost immediately after Mr. Trump took office and issued executive orders mandating the erasure of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government, the Air Force removed training material with references to the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black aviation unit that served in World War II. After an outcry from some members of Congress, and a direct appeal from Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, the move was reversed.
Weeks later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began reviving the old names of the military bases. In March, Fort Liberty in North Carolina again became Fort Bragg. This month, Fort Moore in Georgia was renamed Fort Benning. Both now honor soldiers who happened to have the same last names as the Confederate generals.
While those moves were not specifically named, some of the Democrats who spoke at the ceremony alluded to the fact that efforts to prioritize, expand and recognize the history of diversity were under attack.
“We reject any efforts now to erase this history, and that is why this bipartisan ceremony, is so particularly important,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader.
“While there’s much that divides our country today, there’s even more that joins us together,” said Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, who spearheaded the medal effort in the House. “Like a commitment to service, a commitment to doing something bigger than yourself.”
Congress has awarded its gold medal nearly 200 times, and recipients have included a range of people, including George Washington and the Wright Brothers.
The award has been given to several veterans and survivors of World War II, including the Navajo Code Talkers, Chinese American and Filipino veterans, and women known as Rosie the Riveters who filled labor shortages, building weapons for the war effort.
