They established the A P O.

Which we now know if you're military.

Oh, they actually

like the, yeah.

Yes.

Oh wow.

So they established this a p O system interest, which makes which

it easier to disseminate mail.

Yeah, I think it's like army post office, right?

Yeah.

And then when they are done in England, they move on to France.

Welcome to Talk With History.

I am host Scott here with my wife and historian Jen.

Hello.

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All right, so we went to Washington, DC not too long ago, visited some

friends, and we went over based on the recommendation from one

of our listeners to the National Historic, it's like a national park.

Mm-hmm.

Place for Mary McLeod Bethune.

Who's Mary McLeod Bethune.

And why'd we go over

there?

Sure.

So we went to the Mary McLeod Bethune Council house located

at 1318 Vermont Avenue, and we went there because she is just.

She's an amazing African American woman in American history.

She did a lot of things that people don't really know, and even when we met

with the National Park Service Guides there, they're surprised at how people

don't know who she is and because of all the stuff that she's done.

And

to be honest, we didn't really know.

Yes.

So we had actually gone over there.

Assuming we were going to learn more about the six Triple eight.

Mm-hmm.

So the six eight is, was brought up on our radar because Tyler Perry is making

a movie about the six Triple eight and the six Triple eight was an Army World

War ii, army B Postal Battalion of all

African

American women, of all African American women.

Tyler Perry is making this movie, and so somebody brought it up to us mm-hmm.

In a comment, said, Hey, you guys should go check out.

You know this house that kind of covers the six Triple eight and it didn't

really cover the six triple eight at all.

It was more about Mary McCloud Bethune, who was instrumental in creating

that.

Yes.

So she is, um, she started the head, the National Council of Negro Women.

That's right.

And it's very interesting how these.

Blocks get put into place for her to be influential during this time.

She's born July 10th, 1875, so she's born in the late 18 hundreds.

So her parents are former enslaves and they end up being sharecroppers, and

she's like the 15th of 17 children.

It's crazy.

It's crazy, but she is very smart, even as a child.

And so they're, she's the one that, that they push towards education and she

gets a college education and she goes down to Florida and she starts a school

in Daytona for African American girls.

And it's there that she starts.

Her work and her influence goes to a woman's rally, like a woman's meeting,

and she's alive during the time of women getting the right to vote.

That's right.

But we talk about this before, just because women got the

right to vote doesn't mean all women got the right to vote.

Yeah.

Remind me when, what years those, the suffrage movement was.

Well, the suffrage movement is a very long time.

It's about 1880s, all the way to the right to vote in 1920.

Okay.

But, but during, but women, but African American women are

not part of that conversation.

That's right.

And that's.

What?

She goes to a rally and she gets very upset that African American women aren't

being represented and she kindies a kindred spirit in Eleanor Roosevelt.

That's right.

Who also feels the same way that you can't be just representing

one uh group of women.

When you ask for women getting the right to vote, it needs to be all

women getting the right to vote, right.

So they become friends.

And so in 1935 when Roosevelt is president, he, Eleanor

is very influential.

And you would like to have this lady as a advisor for you, for

African-American women, for African-American, just in general

diversity, influence, representation.

And so he, he does put her on his council.

That's right.

And how is very.

I, I honestly was pretty surprised by that FDRs is given a lot of credit as this

president who carries us through World War II and was in office for quite some time.

But to have that recommendation to him and think about Eleanor Roosevelt, she

really pushed the envelope sometimes.

Yeah.

Like how we talked about in Tus with the Tuskegee Airman, the

Tuskegee Airmen, she had the Tuskegee airmen like fly her around.

Mm-hmm.

When nobody there expected or wanted that to happen.

She's like, Nope, you're gonna take me up.

We're gonna fly around.

So she does that.

She probably walks back to, gets back to the White House after this

rally and tells her husband and she's just like, I met someone.

She needs to be on your council.

And he's probably just like, yes, dear.

Yeah.

So it's in 1935.

She founds, she founds and becomes the first president of the

National Council of Negro Women.

And that's the same year President Roosevelt brings her to Washington as

special advisor on Minority Affairs.

And like you to say with Eleanor Roosevelt, she's very influential in

all people who are underrepresented.

Like she's gonna push for women to fly during the war.

She pushes for African American men to fly during the war, and now she's

pushing for African American women to be represented in the war effort as well.

And that's where.

Mary McLeod Bethune is gonna be her connection to the six triple eight.

That's where it

comes in.

So that's where it comes in.

So when you look up six triple eight DC with like we did and her house

came up, this is the connection because she personally chooses the

first 40 African American women.

To go into the army during the war.

Yeah.

So it, that was one of the things I thought that was really cool.

It's the six triple eight.

There's a reason that they're making a movie about it.

Mm-hmm.

There's a reason that Tyler Perry's doing this, and that they're getting

some pretty big name actresses into this, because their story is pretty incredible.

But when you trace that further back, we, we are want to do Yes.

Here on Walk With History, Mary McLeod Bethune.

She was the one who advocated, Hey, no, women need to be a part of this war too.

We're not just gonna sit here at home and African American women

need to be allowed to serve.

And she p and she personally handpicked the first 40,

so she handpicked the first 40.

And think of it a lot like when we did the Tuskegee Airmen, right?

Like the reason why these Tuskegee airmen were so effective as pilots

is cuz they're the best of the best.

They're making it so hard for these men to get into the flight program.

They have to be college educated, they have to have proven this,

they have to be physically fit.

Once those men are meeting all those wicked.

And they go through flight training.

They're great pilots because they're the best of the best.

And the same thing is true for these 40 women that she's choosing as

these first 40 representation into the army for African American women.

These are graduate student level educated women.

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, Kate, because there's a

couple really classic pictures.

If you look up the six triple eight, six and then three eights, right?

The 6 6 6 8 88 6 8 88, 688.

Six thousand six thousand eight hundred eighty eight Postal

battalion six triple eight.

That's the easier way to look it up.

But if you look up the six triple eight, there's a couple very

classic pictures mm-hmm that you'll find in black and white.

And it's the African American women standing formation being

inspected by major charity atoms now major charity atoms.

I, if I remember correctly, I read that she was actually like, she had

her master's or she was like, like more highly educated than the average

person that was already coming in.

She had

her master's, she was studying her master's and it was

the school that shall not be named.

Oh, Ohio State.

Was that

SI state?

Yeah.

That's

too funny.

So she's actually the first African American woman to

receive an Army commission.

Yeah.

Which

I, I just thought was so cool.

And she's gonna be the commander of the six Triple eight of the six Triple

eight She hand chosen by Mary McLeod.

The Yeah, that's what's so cool about it all.

And

so if you look at, at our video that we made for this, the thumbnail,

I tried to bring all the elements out.

Mm-hmm.

And it's hard to do good thumbnails.

I wouldn't say I'm the best at 'em, but this particular one I

show Mary, you know, the major charity Adams, you know, inspecting.

Yes.

You know, the six triple eight.

And then on the other side is Tyler Perrick.

Right?

So then, and now, and then Mary McLeod Bethune kind of sitting there in the

middle because it really was because of this woman and all the other things

that we'll talk a little bit more about.

But I, we wanna have time on this podcast.

Yes.

To cover everything that she did is incredible.

Incredible.

So let's talk a little

bit about the six Triple Eight.

Then we'll circle back about the house Sure.

And what the house, and then we'll talk more about Mary Cloud Beth's life.

Sure.

Okay.

So the six triple eight, just so we have an understanding of what they are.

They were brought together because of this huge backlog of mail.

Service member mail during World War ii, 65,000 pieces of mail that

never got delivered, warehouses full of mail in England and France,

and so they established the six triple eight in March of 1945.

So if you think.

The end of the war is coming, although people don't know that.

And Charity Adams is selected as their commander in actually February of 45.

So she gets these women together, they get over to Birmingham,

France in March of 1945.

And immediately they, this 850 of them, they separate mail.

They get into these warehouses and they start to separate

mail into A, B, C, and D.

Levels of where it's going.

And the mail has been kept in these warehouses.

Some of it has been destroyed by rats.

Christmas packages, some's been there for years.

And so they repackaged that mail and it's freezing cold and they're

wearing like ski clothes and fatigues and they work three rotating eight

hour ships, seven days a week.

And what they were told was gonna take 'em six months.

It took 'em three months.

Yep.

And they got all that mail out and delivered.

They established the A P O.

Which we now know if you're

military.

Oh, they actually like the, yeah.

Yes.

Oh, wow.

So they

established this APO system Oh.

Interest, which makes, makes it easier to disseminate mail.

Yeah.

I think it's like army post office or something.

Yeah.

And then when they are done in England, they move on to France to

another, again, warehouse full of mail.

Told it's gonna take 'em six months to do, take some three months to do.

And they're able to disseminate this male quickly and effectively.

And what's interesting about the six triple eight, which I wanted to say

too, is they're very self-contained.

Battalion.

They were, there's no male counterpart.

Usually there's a lot of male counterpart when you have a female battalion.

But they did all the pieces of it.

They did all the pieces.

They were their own mps.

Their own chaplains, their own M W R, so their own pao.

So they're doing their own dances and their own mess cooks.

They're very self-contained battalion.

So you think this is all African-American women who are very

much a self-contained army unit.

And what this does is with all this.

Racism and people who are very skeptical of their ability.

It shows how effective they are and just how well oiled their

machine is to get this all done.

And.

I know you think maybe male.

Wait, what's the significance of male?

Yes.

I got a good thing going.

We have talked about this before as service members and people

who fought in World War II and war in general, you don't.

No, the end of your time, yeah, you're being drafted to war and the end of

your time is you fight till you win or you fight until you are killed.

Yeah.

So that's basically what happens.

And so people are in fighting for years.

Yes.

And so when they're getting packages in mail, I always say, you've

reminded of what you're fighting

for and it's really your only tie to home.

Mm-hmm.

These folks weren't getting phone calls out on the front lines.

No.

Right.

Not with everything that was going on.

So mail was the way of communication even when we were in the Navy, right.

On a ship.

Mm-hmm.

That was like one of the best things.

I know it was right.

Days of the mail was coming in and you had.

You know, deck hair package that your mom put together.

I know.

And just sent you a bunch of junk food and magazines, DVDs back in

the day and that was so great.

That was such a spirit lifter.

It was so great.

It was, was

so great.

And people would send you cards and pictures and just all those things that

you would pass around and show each other.

Yeah, because your package lifts up other people as well.

And so for them to get all of this stuff out, and like I said, even the Christmas

packages that had been destroyed, they'd be packaged and make sure they

still got to the service members.

So what they did for morale is camp can't be measured.

And I think that's very important to bring up.

So that's about the six Triple eight.

So when you see the show, just the movie, just remember it's very self-contained.

They're gonna start the APO system.

They get out there at March in 1945.

They stay out there for about a year.

It's disbanded.

In March of 1946,

Roosevelt wanted to bring her up to be on his council for Diversity

affairs, and so she moves into that house that is the house for

the National Park Service in 1943.

Okay.

And we, I had asked the questions, well, how.

What kind of neighborhood was the best?

Cause this is a nice Victorian house and he's, oh yeah.

People don't really like her here.

She had a hard time because it's a nice area of dc but

she lived there for six years.

And that house was the headquarters of the Council for Negro Women.

Yep.

And it's, it'll stay the headquarters until 1966.

Yeah.

So even after, I think she passes in the fifties.

She passes May

eight, 18th,

1955.

But it, it's, it stays a headquarters in, in later on.

It's actually used for some pretty significant

events.

Yes.

I, I know it in 1966, it's, it's Masa headquarters for the National Council of.

Uh, Negro women, but it's used to help plan the march on dc.

Yeah, that was cool.

And when you think of the march on DC I'm talking about Martin Luther King.

Yeah.

And the, I have a dream speech, so they use this house, so if you wanna visit

this house, and the table there is where they say people met and they talked about

the, everything they discussed, the music.

And the other speeches that'll happen and the other events that

they'll do, all the logistics that go planning of Big March, like

that, it's not, people just don't show up for something like that.

Like they actually had to plan it in advance.

They didn't plan

it So that the March on Washington was planned in the house.

Yeah.

So the house was also, it had a chandelier from the White House.

That's cool.

That she received from Truman, I believe.

Yep.

And then if you go upstairs, you see her bedroom at her office.

And you see like a big working room cuz she ran the council there.

And then on the third floor it was basically a safe house.

Yeah.

They, it wasn't open to the public, wasn't open for the public.

That's where the National Park Service offices are.

But I found it so interesting.

She ran a safe house for African American women.

They could come anytime and stay there and she kept no record of who stayed.

And that's why the National Park Service can't tell you whoever stayed there, but

there were always women there and able to use it to get back on their feet.

Or to get away from abusive relationships, whatever they

needed that was available to them.

Oh.

The more I read about Mary McCloud Bethune was I was just like,

I just, my jaw kept dropping further and further and closer to the floor

each time I read more about hers.

I mean, she was so influential and did so much.

She even established what's now a pretty well established college in Florida.

Yeah, and I think you even pointed out, That she in, it's either in Congress or

in the, in the Congressional buildings.

In the Capitol buildings.

There's two statues that represent each state.

Yes.

And she be, they made her one of the statues

For Florida.

For Florida, yes.

Her and her and her college robe and, and cap.

But in, she, so when I said in 1904, how she established that school for

girls in Daytona, Bethune Cookman College, and at the time, This is in

Jacksonville, and the school became accredited and it officially changed

his name to Bethune Cookman College, and Bethune became the first African American

woman to serve as a college president.

Yeah, it, she did so many firsts and she pushed the

envelope to start so many firsts.

Mm-hmm.

It really was incredible.

Talk about someone who was born, you know, Not long after the Civil War

in the 1875 and then living right up to really the kind of heart of the

Civil Rights movement right up to it.

And she was this kind of key, pivotal figure that was around

for all these events and.

Established colleges in schools and was the first African

American college president Yes.

And was the first one to get African American women into the armed services

and was the first one to select.

It was just absolutely incredible.

I was, it's incredible.

Blown away.

And so after she's done in DC and she retires from that being the

president of the Council of Migo women, she goes back to Florida.

Yeah.

And she, she retires basically at the college, becomes

president of that college.

And then she spends the remainder of her life there at her home and

basically her retreat, and it's now known as the Mary Bethune Foundational

National Historic Landmark.

And that's where she's buried as well?

Yeah, it was.

It's the, you know, We're making a big deal about her because

I think she is a big deal.

But it's funny because the site in dc, this National Park site,

it's not very well developed.

No.

And it, and we were very surprised.

And even the needs more recognition, I'll call 'em the park rangers

that we're working there.

Yeah.

They even said like, Hey, please come in and film.

And this site is small, but it's right in the heart of dc.

It's not hard to get to.

It's not hard to get to.

And I think it's such a big part of American History.

Plus it's a great place for research because the National Council of Negro

Women contains the National Archives for Black Women's History, and it's the

only institution in the United States solely dedicated to that purpose.

That's right.

Um, so that is all housed there.

So that's another thing, the archive.

The research that you can do and I felt the big just being in that room

and they had some artifacts in there and they were gonna put more stuff in

there, but you're around her artifacts.

She has a cane given to her by Roosevelt, like you're around the

artifacts there in that house.

So it's very cool to visit.

It's free to visit visits, national Park Service, even if you wanna see the table

where they plan the march on Washington.

But when the movie comes out, I think people will wanna know more

connection to the building blocks.

To put that battalion in place to do the amazing thing they did during World

War ii, and she is the cornerstone

and I saw.

On.

I was trying to pull information on who's gonna be in this

movie for six triple eight.

I thought I saw Oprah was supposed to be one of the cast members.

No.

And she would be the perfect person to play Mary McLeod Bethune.

She would, she's not sorry.

Oprah.

Um, if you're ever watching this, So I don't think you're at the point

where you're gonna be playing someone who's serving overseas as part of this

World War II unit, but she, she would, most likely, she would be great to

be on the council choosing the women to be the first board.

A hundred

percent.

She could be.

Mary McLeod Bethune.

Very excited to see the six Triple eight movie.

I think it's supposed to be a Netflix movie coming out.

Um, I'm not sure when.

I think they've only recently started filming

everything that could do.

I hope you enjoyed our exploration of the remarkable life

and enduring impact of Mary McLeod by.

Born during a time of racial segregation, Bethune defied the odds and became

a trailblazing educator, political leader, and civil rights activist.

Beth's influence extended beyond her institution as she advised multiple

US presidents on minority affairs and became a powerful voice for equality

and justice with just a small part of her impact resulting in the first

African American women serving in the US Army during World War ii.

She established the National Council of Negro Women leaving an indelible

mark on the Civil Rights Movement.

Mary McLeod Beth's legacy inspires us to challenge barriers, fight

for equal opportunities, and strive for a better future.

So join us next time as we continue exploring the lives of more remarkable

individuals who have shaped our world.

And thank you for listening to the Talk with History podcast.

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Thank you.