Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: I got a question, do you ever feel overwhelmed at work?
Speaker 1: Like your email inbox got five hundred unread messages and
Speaker 1: you just want somebody to stop the earth so you
Speaker 1: can get off. Well, let me tell you about Major Charity.
Speaker 1: Adams and the six Triple eight. These women looked at
Speaker 1: a pile of seventeen million pieces of mail and said,
Speaker 1: light work. I didn't know. I didn't know. No, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: But but but before we get into that, let's talk
Speaker 1: about major charity. Atoms born in nineteen eighteen in Cottrell,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. That's right. She's a Carolinian and she was
Speaker 1: raised in Columbia, South Carolina. Her dad was a minister,
Speaker 1: her mom was a teacher, and together they basically raised
Speaker 1: a human LinkedIn profile. I mean, she a valedictorian math
Speaker 1: degree from Wilberforce University, teaching career, and then, because clearly
Speaker 1: she didn't have enough on her plate, she joined the
Speaker 1: Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War Two, and then
Speaker 1: she just casually became the first black woman commissioned as
Speaker 1: an officer. Now fast forward to nineteen forty four, the
Speaker 1: army gives her a mission lead the sixth Triple Eight,
Speaker 1: the only all black, all female battalion deployed overseas. Their
Speaker 1: job soort seventeen million pieces of backlog mail for soldiers
Speaker 1: stationed all across Europe. Now, these women were dealing with
Speaker 1: warehouses full of letters stacked Florida ceiling. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: rotten packages, a smell you could probably never forget, probably
Speaker 1: smell worse than circus dirt. And then I mentioned racism
Speaker 1: and sexism, because of course it was the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: They weren't just fighting the male they were fighting people
Speaker 1: who didn't think they deserved to be there in the
Speaker 1: first place. But Charity Adams wasn't having it. She was like, look,
Speaker 1: we're gonna sort this mail, and we're gonna do it
Speaker 1: better than anyone expects. They set up three shifts working
Speaker 1: around the clock, sorting sixty five thousand pieces of mail
Speaker 1: a day. Meanwhile, I'm over here struggling the archive one
Speaker 1: thousand posts on my Instagram. And here's the kicker. They
Speaker 1: were given six months to sort through seventeen million pieces
Speaker 1: of meal. They did it. In three three months. They
Speaker 1: basically invented efficiency. Their motto was no mail, low morale
Speaker 1: cause they knew the stakes. These letters were more than
Speaker 1: just paper. They were lifelines. Soldiers got letters from their moms, girlfriends,
Speaker 1: maybe a side chick or two. Hell, I ain't judging,
Speaker 1: warn't stressful, but in all seriousness, what they did was
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible. And here's why it matters today. Major Adams
Speaker 1: and the six Triple Eight proved that black women could
Speaker 1: take on impossible task and knock them out the park,
Speaker 1: even when the world doubted them. That story is a
Speaker 1: our resilience, excellence and not letting anybody tell you what
Speaker 1: you're capable of. So the next time you're drowning in
Speaker 1: emails or a coworker sends you one of those per
Speaker 1: my last email passive aggressive messages, just channel you're in
Speaker 1: a six Triple eight. Think hell, if they could sort
Speaker 1: seventeen million letters, I can damn sure Handlekaren from Accountant
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, Tyler Perry did a
Speaker 1: movie about the six Triple eight. Carrie Washington was the lead.
Speaker 1: You can find it on Netflix. Shouts to the six
Speaker 1: Triple eight, a group that I didn't know maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't either. Listen up, man, if you love this series,
Speaker 1: you can now listen to us every single week starting
Speaker 1: in March for all types of things that I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't either. Did you know snails have two
Speaker 1: thousand teeth at least and they're all on their tongue.
Speaker 1: Or did you know that J'alil White rkle was supposed
Speaker 1: to be Rudy in The Cosby Show, but then Keisha
Speaker 1: Knight Pulliam pulled up and sprinkle some black girl on
Speaker 1: it weekly starting in March. I didn't know. Maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't either. Make sure you're following the show on the
Speaker 1: I Heart app so that you can hear more. Okay, Bye,