Netflix has dropped a teaser to The Six Triple Eight, the based-on-real-life drama from Tyler Perry.
Kerry Washington plays the no-nonsense Maj. Charity Adams in the World War II film: She was the leader of what was known as the U.S. Army’s 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.
The group was comprised of 855 Black women, both enlisted and officers, deployed to Europe after combat training and tasked with sorting a massive backlog of letters and packages sent back and forth between millions of the country’s fighting men and their loved ones back home.
Washington tells her charges, “Soldiers: You must be perfect. You do not have the luxury to be good. You have the burden to be better.”
She later adds, “A lot of people do not want us to succeed. We have the most to prove!”
The battalion’s diligence and a unique organizational system they created to track each soldier in theater was considered key to the morale of American GIs, and therefore the overall war effort.
When the war was over, Adams achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel — which at the time made her the highest-ranking Black woman in the Army.
Milauna Jackson, Ebony Obsidian, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, Jay Reeves and Sarah Jeffery also star in the film, which features Oprah Winfrey, Susan Sarandon, Dean Norris and Sam Waterston.
The Six Triple Eight drops on Netflix Dec. 20.
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