There is Something to Be Learned About Dominican History in Tyler Perry’s WWII Film, Despite its American Focus
Tyler Perry’s The Six Triple Eight is a must-see film, one I recommend all Dominicans see. The film documents the story of the only all-Black, all-female, American group of World War II service members referred to as the 6888th Central Postal Battalion. In significant ways, the story of the 800-plus women who formed the 6888th parallels some of the experiences of those Dominicans who also fought against Hitler’s Nazis and his axis alliance. Understanding this history, and preserving Dominicans’ collective memory of this period, can inspire future generations of leadership throughout the diaspora, in battlefields, in banana fields, and in boardrooms alike.
I was born in Brooklyn, NY to two Dominicans from Marigot and Salisbury. As a child susceptible to New York’s frigid winters, I spent sick days away from school with my grandmother—the late Dullabella Alfred of Marigot. Though she lived in a senior citizen center in an area of Brooklyn called Ocean Hill-Brownsville, she recreated Dominica within her one-bedroom public housing apartment. Her home was a botanical garden of all sorts of plants, some hanging from her ceiling and some growing out her windows. She made bush tea in the morning, beet juice in the afternoon, and she rubbed my blistering nose with aloe throughout those days. I hated some of the concoctions she made me drink, but I loved her.
One image within her apartment that remains seared in my mind is that of my grandfather, Pershing Alfred, and two other members of his WWII combat unit, the Caribbean Regiment. On the back of that photo, my grandmother references my grandfather’s “fellow comrades” in the picture: “Chambers from Roseau, the other Guyanese.” She notes that they were “sent to Egypt.” Furthermore, my grandmother includes the date of my grandfather’s untimely death in 1956, a few years after his WWII service and a month before my mother’s birth. He was around my age of 37. On sick days as a child, I stared at this picture and wondered what my grandfather was like.
Thoughts of Pershing came to me throughout Perry’s The Six Triple Eight. A central theme of the film is the concept that Black service members, especially during America’s Jim Crow period, carried multiple burdens with them during war. They not only carried the weight of America’s geopolitical interests, but they also carried aspirations of being a credit to their race. For Black women in service, burdens associated with gender overlayed an already complicated relationship with war.
A standout moment in The Six TripleEight was when commanding officer Charity Adams, portrayed by actress Kerry Washington, introduced herself to the 6888th Battalion. During the monologue, moving back and forth before a line of women standing in attention, Charity Adams states:
You are not only in the army, you are women, and you are Negroes. And because you are women and Negroes, you do not have the luxury to be as good as the white soldiers. You have the burden to be better.
The movie documents how the battalion embraced this burden and indeed performed better than expected. Despite being relegated to what can be perceived as a menial task – i.e., sorting mail – the battalion rose to the occasion in an inspiring way that makes Perry’s film special.
While enjoying the film, it was hard for me not to draw connections between Perry’s portrayal and the little I know of my grandfather’s experience. Despite being affiliated with a different allied country, the Caribbean Regiment faced challenges similar to those the 6888th Battalion overcame. The Caribbean Regiment was formed in 1944 after years of debate in Britain about the fitness of West Indian troops. While Caribbean leaders saw involvement in the war as an opportunity to both prove their loyalty and achieve equality, others saw their involvement as a liability. James Grigg, the head of Britain’s War Office, initially argued that “West Indians are not a very robust race, which would detract from their value as combatant troops.” Grigg also raised concerns that the creation of a Caribbean Regiment would cause friction with American troops, especially if West Indians expected fair and equal treatment in their service. Eventually, Grigg agreed to the creation of the Caribbean Regiment, but only if the unit’s activities were limited to garrison duty in non-combat areas.
During the Summer of 1944, the Caribbean Regiment traveled to Fort Eustis, Virginia to train, becoming the first British force to do so in the United States since the American Revolution. The unit was subsequently deployed to Egypt where they protected the Suez Canal. The Caribbean Regiment never experienced direct combat despite their skill. According to Michael S. Healey and his seminal article on the Caribbean Regiment titled “Colour, Climate and Combat,” the Caribbean Regiment’s dreams of combat were deferred and took a mental toll on the unit. Healey notes:
Although the battalion, when not training or languishing in enforced isolation, won four sporting competitions open to all units in Egypt, the lack of action threatened its morale and discipline.
Throughout Perry’s film, I wondered how the burden to be better, while being denied the opportunity to prove his value, weighed on my grandfather’s psyche. From the little I know from family research, I gather Pershing was always service-oriented, athletically skilled, and intellectually acute. I believe he possessed the qualities most people envision in a good soldier. Early Dominican news clippings cite him as being “brilliant” in the high jump and pole jump. When coming of age, he participated in Marigot’s Literary League, engaging in debates about nation-building at a critical point in Dominica’s history. In one such debate, he led the argument as to why the scholar was more valuable to a country than the soldier. Pershing is both a scholar and soldier in my thoughts.
Although there are questions about my grandfather’s life and death I may never learn, Perry’s The Six Triple Eight brought me a little closer to him. Though the 6888th Battalion’s experience is uniquely American, there are themes within the film that are universal to the Black experience globally. By underscoring the untold stories of the 6888th Battalion, Perry allows all Black descendants of WWII veterans to reimagine their forebears in an inspiring way.
Ernie C. Jolly is a federal lobbyist and former U.S. Congressional Chief of Staff
You know, although I do not have any interest, in the all female battalion thing, I do have to thank the administration for bringing this article: Since reading it, and disusing it with a relative, I discovered that the man named Pershing Alfred is closely related to me via my grandmother, born Alfred.
The source of my information told me he might be a brother to my grandmother. I have no way of confirming that since my grandmother, and her sister believe to be his sister also are long dead!
So: Admin, I wish to thank you for this particular article.
Wonder who the people in the picture are, seeing as there’s no notation. Is it their grandfather or just a random picture ?
Pershing Alfred in the Center
👌🏽👍🏽 danke
Ernie C. Jolly, thank you for documenting your family history. I particularly appreciate your retelling of the many ways those of African descent throughout the ‘black Atlantic’ worked to assert the dignity of person and community through their involvement in WW2. Though the retelling of history is always a contested space, we honor the spirit of veterans and their enduring legacy.
I don’t want to dismiss your advise relating to “Dominican history to Tyler Perry’s WWII film.” As matter of fact; I as a Dominican born in Wesley, cannot relate to any type or form of American history except where it pertains to slavery, although I was not born in the era of slavery. Interestingly, while you wish that Dominicans relate to the history of an all black female battalion in the American military, there is nothing astonishing about that because before them there was the Buffalo Soldiers; then came the Tuskegee Airmen (Pilots) and other segregated black troops!
Ironically you seems to forget the history of Black Dominica, born pilots fought in World War ll flying over Germany, to subdue Hitler: So let me mention Wallace Plendeleff out of Wesley; he was brother to the late Charlie Samuel; Vivian Edward Dalrymple (Ed Scobie); also Moises, and, there are others, not including the late Egbert Joseph, and others who fought in ground combat! We have untaught history!
The article is limited, narrow and not comprehensive. Fair points. But I have not forgotten the history you rightly shared. In fact, I share ancestry with one of those Dominicans that participated in the Royal Air Force. GK Bryant is my maternal great grandfather, and is the father to H.C. Bryant, one of those RAF members
To be honest with you I actually meant to mention Bryant, who I always confess with Moises. When I was a kid I saw Bryant photograph hanging in the house of my great-aunt Emilia Alfred (Ma Sune) in Marigot, she was the late grandmother of Lois Robinson, and sister to my late grandmother, Te-Wen (little queen) known as Ma John, whose name was actually Margarita Alfred.
I mean American history, has nothing to do with us.
The only thing we have in common with Black people in America is our ancestors were stolen from West Africa and brought to North & South America, and the Caribbean, in shackles!
Now if the author wants to relate, I suggest that person read about the Vessy Denmark Telemaque insurrection, what he did to the white oppressors, when they attacked his Church, to end slavery, for which he hung.
They claimed he was born in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, but I have evidence to contradict that, I know for a fact we are from a tribe still existing in Senegal in West Africa.
Let me say I never understood the relationship with Bryant, to my great-aunt nor her grand sons we call Atkins, or Wakefield, Lois, and granddaughter Agather.
As an 7-8 years old having the opportunity to watch your family all dressed up in flying attire, standing next to what I have long understood to be one of the most dangerous in the fleet of the British Spitfires aircraft, was fascinating!
We have so much untold history, history if only one would dig, the findings would be shocking.
Dominica prior to the Industrial Revolution in Britain flourished with agricultural industries, for that reason we had people coming from all over the Caribbean to work in our country!
I personally might be one of the few living with my true African name Telemaque. My grandmother lived from 1890-1993. She always told me there was a man who turned cane juice to sugar and rum on the Londonderry Estate called Tillman, actually meant Te’le’maque, from the Waloffe Tribe.
Okay, ECJ: FYI; I found out how come your relative Bryan photo in his war attire was hanging in my aunts house in Marigot.
He was the uncle of my cousins Wakefield, and Atkins!
If you ever heard about the Armor’s in Dominica lawyers originally from Wesley, Bryant was their uncle. If you ever heard of a man from Wesley named McClemon Harper, the late, they were all related.
Bryant actually was the uncle of all the Armor in Dominica.
There is a guy named Lois Roninsons my cousin he is a living encyclopedia, perhaps a family historian too,if you could get to talk him you would be amazed!
my daughter is stationed at Charity Adams battalion now and I am proud to have seen this movie and hats off to Tyler Perry come find me when you return to Memphis I would love to work with you
Gabriel Christian should write about the Dominicans who left their family and served in Grenada as members of the Caribbean Peace-keeping Force in 1983,after the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.Those brave Dominicans worked with the 82nd the 108 and the 65 divisions,they also worked in police stations all over the island.Later in 1984 those same patriots were trained by the 7th Special Forces Group 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg North Carolina USA.They were trained as both police officers and soldiers.Later some went to Haiti to work as security officers.
Again you already seem to have the information and facts. why don’t you start writing about it. you asking someone else to do and then you will complain it far from the facts. You already have all the info. what happened? are you too lazy or do not believe in your abilities?
Finally u make sense….and that because you were one of them.
why don’t you write it lol. you already have all of the information.
You need to shut up, you don’t even know what you talking about!
Eugenia Charles made Reagan send troops to Grenada, to fight Cubans they say. Eugenia Charles sent forty rusty guns ahead of the less than forty hungry Dominicans who went to Grenada, by the time they got there there was no war to fight.
By then the United States Marine had already destroyed an asylum with less than a dozen mentally ill people inside.
I don’t know where you got this lie that Dominicans was trained at fort Bragg in North Carolina!
Are you not tired of lying, you illiterate fool?
We remember the forty (40) rusty Riffles Eugenia Charles sent to Grenada via LIAT prior to the few Dominicans going to Grenada, the riffles were so old they were not sure they could fire!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahah!
While I am not aware of Perry’s movie something in this article caught my eyes the fact that his parents are Dominicans and from Marigot and the name Pershin brought me back to my days at Wesley and at hodges and my parents talking to and about his grand father and my days trucking bananas from marigot where Pershin was a popular man
so little in that film was historically arcurate its laughable
you must have been there to witness it all. why don’t you make a part 2. call it WIAAJA.
It’s a movie (for entertainment purposes) with as much factual information as could possibly be gathered. This is why some people do not learn and grow through other’s experiences. Keep your negativity to yourself, nobody is listening to you.
yeah and peeps like the un educated you will take it as historical fact then talk shit . next thing ull start to say ninja used to walk on water like in japanese movies
why didn’t you write and produce it then?
neither was the people who made the actual movie they were not there thats why they made a racially heated movie and doctored loads of parts to push a racial narative
I didn’t mention
anything about who
was or wasn’t there🤔