The Soldier Support Institute at Fort Jackson, home to the Adjutant General School, Finance and Comptroller School, the Noncommissioned Officer Academy, U.S. Army School of Music, the Interservice Postal Training Activity and the 369th Adjutant General Battalion, held a redesignation ceremony, Dec. 12.
The ceremony officially redesignated the location as the Soldier Support Institute, Army Sustainment University-Adams Campus, in honor of Lt. Col. Charity Adams.
The redesignation occurred as part of the Department of Defense’s Naming Commission that identified nine Army posts, dozens of buildings and hundreds of street names to be renamed or redesignated because they bore the names of individuals associated with the Confederate States of America.
“The Naming Commission’s primary goal was to inspire service members and military communities with names or values that have meaning,” said Brig. Gen. Jason E. Kelly, Fort Jackson commander. “Today, we’re being good ancestors. We’re getting it right.”
Adams was the first black woman to serve in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and the highest-ranking black female in the Army at the time.
“I served as an Army officer for 28 years and I could not have done that if (Adams) had not blazed the path for me,” said Sydney A. Smith, the president of Army Sustainment University, Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia. “… Her legacy is going to be an example for the 32,000 plus sustainment leaders who walk through the doors of Army Sustainment University each year, both here at the Soldier Support Institute as well as our other campus at Fort Gregg-Adams, her other namesake.”
Adams grew up in Columbia, South Carolina and graduated high school as her class valedictorian. She relocated to Ohio and attended Wilberforce University where she obtained her bachelor’s degree. She promptly returned to South Carolina and began teaching junior high school. During the summer, she attended The Ohio State University in pursuit of her master’s in psychology.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Adams promptly halted her educational pursuits and joined the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps where she was quickly assigned to Officer Candidate School due to her scholarly and leadership skills.
Adams completed the first female officer candidate course at Fort Des Moines, Iowa in August 1942 and was the first female of African American descent to receive a commission in the Army
In 1944, she was selected to command the 6888th Central Postal Directory in England, which was tasked with delivering mail to and from nearly 3 million Soldiers fighting in the European theater.
At the end of war, she was promoted to lieutenant colonel, which was the highest officer grade a female in the Women’s Army Corps could legally hold. She was discharged in 1946 and completed her master’s in vocational psychology at The Ohio State University where she met her husband Stanley Earley, Jr.
She later became the Dean at the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (now Tennessee State University) and Georgia State University. She also served on many civic boards and mentored a new generation of black leaders.
“Lt. Col. Charity Adams was the epitome of an Army Sustainer. She was given a practically impossible mission with limited resources and very poor conditions,” Smith said. “… She worked out of dimly lit, rat-infested hangars and warehouses and yet she and her battalion of 900 Soldiers literally delivered well beyond the expected; clearing a six-month backlog of mail in just three months.”
“She combined her mastery of the art of postal operations with exceptional inspired leadership for her troops, who worked practically nonstop,” Smith continued. “Just as our sustainers around the glove do today. She took the impossible and made it look easy.”
Also in attendance at the monumental ceremony, were Adams’ two children, Judith and Staney Earley, who attended for their mother.
“Redesignations are bridges from the past to the future,” said Kelly. “and by design, honor people who inspire hope and whose courage, dignity, patriotism and service exemplify the very best of us.”
Although Adams passed away in 2002, her legacy will continue to live on in the passion, leadership, and dedication of each service member that passes through the Soldier Support Institute, Army Sustainment University - Adams Campus.
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