The Six Triple Eight

This historical drama shines a light on the forgotten history of the all-Black Women's Army Corps unit that came through when called upon despite being ignored and degraded by the military.

“The Six Triple Eight” is an earnest attempt to shine a light on a historical injustice, in this case the all-Black Women’s Army Corps battalion that played a key role in World War II that’s been overlooked. It’s very much in the vein of “Windtalkers,” “The Tuskeegee Airmen” and other films focusing on racial prejudice during America’s last “good” war.

Co-directed by one-man mogul Tyler Perry along with Armani Ortiz, from an original screenplay by Perry and Kevin Hymel, it’s rah-rah good stuff with Kerry Washington in the lead role as the courageous leader of the 6888th and various white actors as the villains who break out all the stops to keep the do-gooder Negroes (their word) from doing good.

Playing in theaters for a couple of weeks before streaming on Netflix, it’s an old-school war picture, with a motley collection of soldiers who have to put aside their differences and get the mission done at all costs.

Is it a touch smarmy and too on-the-nose with its tale of racial righteousness? Perhaps. But it’s an entertaining flick that will also get your blood burning as these ladies turn cheek after cheek to make history.

Now, since this is a women’s military unit from 80 years ago, there’s not a lot of battle scenes (just one, in fact) and the 6888th are not going to be sabotaging Nazi submarines or stealing plans for a new stealth bomber or anything like that. Their assignment, in fact, was to solve a huge backlog of military mail that had prevented families from getting any word to or from their boys in the European theater for months on end in late 1944 and early 1945.

I admit, it may sound at first blush like the stakes are not very high. But Perry, his colleagues and a strong cast do a great job of breathing life into what might seem like small-potatoes stuff.

Washington plays Captain (later Major) Charity Adams — great movie name, and has the benefit of being a real person — the hard-charging leader of the battalion. She’s hard on her troops, but only because she knows the slightest slip-up on their part will be used by the powers-that-be to condemn every Black military unit.

“Because you are Negroes and women, you do not have the luxury to be as good as the white soldiers. You have the burden to be better,” she trumpets at their first revelry.

Ebony Obsidian plays Lena Derriecott, the young recruit who acts as the audience’s eyes and ears into the story. A teen from Pennsylvania, she’s motivated to join when her loverboy, a rich white Jew who became a pilot, fails to send her any letters as promised. Eventually they learn he was KIA, and Lena wants to do her part for the war effort.

Shanice Shantay acts as the bully who becomes a friend, Johnnie Mae, a big, brassy girl from the South who can’t fit into the standard-issue Army uniform that weren’t made for her buxom curves. She gives Lena a lot of grief for her wallflower ways, but eventually they pal up.

Milauna Jackson is Campbell, Adams’ right-hand woman; Kylie Jefferson is Bernice, a more helpful member of the unit; Jay Reeves plays a new love interest for Lena; Sam Waterston and Susan Sarandon have small roles as FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, who hear about the mail backlog and put things into motion; and Oprah Winfrey has a bit part as civil rights icon Mary McLeod Bethune.

Dean Norris (“Breaking Bad”) plays the main heavy, General Halt — the surname is everything — an overtly racist pighead who chafes at FDR’s order to install a battalion of Black women in charge of a project, even if it’s one he doesn’t consider important. He’s eager to cashier Maj. Adams at the slightest drop of a hat, so when things don’t go so well to start, his nostrils flare like a red-eyed bull.

(Aside: why do movies insist on always casting fat men with faces like a canned ham as the racists? Weren’t there any slim haters?)

Halt even goes so far as to send an Army chaplain to spy on the 6888th, who thunders brimstone from the pulpit about the evils of Black folk dancing.

It turns out there were about 17 million pieces of mail backed up into warehouses in Europe — many of them lacking accurate addresses. On top of that, the Army declined to share the movements of its forces with the 6888th for security reasons, so the mail they would send on would be returned as undeliverable because the group had already moved on.

“There was only one way to eat an elephant. And that is one bite at a time,” Adams tells her soldiers of the daunting task ahead.

Plus, Halt gives them a dilapidated building, the King Edward School, as their headquarters, rat-infested and lacking even heat. But the Six Triple Eight soldier on, getting the job done in record time.

It’s a handsomely shot movie (cinematography by Michael Watson), with slightly washed-out colors, and authentic period costumes, vehicles and sets (production design by Sharon Busse).

“The Six Triple Eight” may not earn any stripes for originality, but it’s a strong story well-told about some courageous Black women who gave a lot of comfort to war-torn families.