"Charity Edna Adams Earley. (3-20-1918-2002

Was the first African American woman to be an an officer in the Woman's Army Air Corps

and was the commanding officer of the first battalion of African American women to serve overseas during World War 2.Born in 1918 in Kittrell Vance County,North Carolina,her father was a minister and her mother was a teacher.Charity was the oldest of four children.She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School and Wilberforce University in Ohio,majoring in math and physics.After graduation she returned to Columbia,teaching school and attended graduate school at Ohio State University during the summer months.Charity enlisted in the U.S. Army's Woman's Axillary Corps(WAAC) in July 1942.She was the first African American woman to be an officer in the WAAC.Later Charity served as the commanding officer and battalion commander of the first battalion of African American women(68888th central Postal Direction) to serve overseas during WW2 (in England) .They helped soldiers get mail during World War 2.After serving in the Army, Charity earned a master's degree in psychology from Ohio State University and became an educator at Tennessee A&I  and Georgia State College.She married a physician,Stanley A. Earley,M.D.,after the war in 1949;they had two children;a son,Stanley 3;and a daughter Judith.Charity was listed on the Smithsonian Institution 110 most important historical Black women,Black women against the odds,in 1982.She was inducted in to the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Ohio Veterans of fame in 1993.Charity was inducted in to the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame in 1991.