Earley, Charity Adams, 1918-2002

Charity Edna Adams Earley (5 December 1918 – 13 January 2002) was an American United States Army officer, educator, and psychologist.

Earley (serving in the military under Adams) was the first African-American woman to be an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC, later WACS) and was the commanding officer of the first battalion of African-American women to serve overseas during World War II, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. The 6888th was nicknamed the "Six Triple Eight" and was made up of 855 black women, both enlisted and officers. Earley was the highest-ranking African-American woman in the army by the completion of the war. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion's motto was "No Mail, Low Morale."

After leaving the services, Earley was inundated by many groups to give talks about her wartime experiences. Earley also went back to Ohio State University and completed her MA in 1946. Following the completion of her degree, she went to work with the Veterans Administration in Cleveland, Ohio as a registration officer. In this position, she reviewed WWII veterans’ requests for educational funding and other benefits offered under the G.I. Bill. She determined how much each veteran would be awarded. She continued in this position from 1946 to 1947. She then turned to a variety of roles in academic administration. She worked as the dean of student personnel services at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College in Nashville, Tennessee and the dean of students at Georgia State College in Savannah, Georgia.

After getting married in 1949, Earley moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where her husband, Stanley A. Earley Jr., was training to be a doctor. In Zurich, she attended Minerva Institute for ten months to learn German. When she had mastered the language, she attended courses for two years at the University of Zurich. In her second year, Earley also studied at the Jungian Institute of Analytical Psychology, but she did not pursue a degree.

Upon her return to the United States in the 1950s, she was extremely active in community and civic work in Ohio, where she lived. She sat on a number of boards including: the board of directors and the board of governors of the Dayton chapter of the American Red Cross, the board of the Sinclair Community College, and the board of the Dayton Power and Light Company. She was the founder of the Black Leadership Development Program (BLDP) in Dayton in 1982, which seeks to educate and train African Americans to be leaders in their communities. Parity, or Parity Inc. as it is now known, which Earley helped create in 2000, facilitates the BLDP’s training program.

Earley died at age 83 on January 13, 2002, in Dayton, Ohio.