Charity Adams

Charity Edna Adams Earley was the first African American woman to be 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 WWII. Born in 1918 in Kittrell, Vance County, North Carolina, Adams' father was a minister and her mother was a teacher. Adams 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. Adams enlisted in the U.S. Army's Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in July 1942. She was the first African...