Cathay Williams Was the Army’s Only Female Buffalo Soldier
and the First Black Female Enlistee
“William Cathay enlisted in the U.S. Army on Nov. 15, 1866, for a three-year term. Since the Army didn’t do full physical examinations during this period, it would allow Cathay to serve out most of the contract, even though William Cathay was Cathay Williams, a woman posing as a man. But her service started long before she was old enough to enlist.
She would end her Army career as the Army’s only female Buffalo Soldier and the first Black woman to enlist.
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She was born in 1844 in Missouri to a free father and an enslaved woman, which made her legally a slave. When the Union Army captured Jefferson City, slaves were considered “contraband” so Cathay Williams and slaves like her supported the Union Army as camp followers. She and others cooked for the troops cleaned their laundry, or acted as nurses.
According to stories told by Williams after her enlistment and discharge, she followed the Union Army throughout the West and was present for many of its most important engagements, including the Siege of Vicksburg and Gen. William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea.
She had begun supporting the Union Army at age 17. By the time the war ended, she was 22 years old, but the Army was all she’d known as an adult. With the Civil War over and slaves across the country freed, she enlisted in the Army, posing as William Cathay, and was sent to the 38th U.S. Infantry Regiment. The unit was organized in 1866 as one of six segregated Black infantry regiments, which became collectively known as “Buffalo Soldiers.” They were the first all-black infantry regiments of the regular Army formed during peacetime.
The 38th’s primary mission was protecting the construction of the intercontinental railroads, the first of which was completed in 1869, when the 38th merged with the 41st Infantry Regiment. The 41st was also a segregated unit, which had spent the time in Louisiana and Texas. The only thing that kept Williams from completing her enlistment was a disease that would be eliminated in the United States 20 years later: smallpox. She contracted the virus not long after signing up for the Army. After recovering, she rejoined the 38th, which was then in New Mexico for the railroads’ east-west continental connection.
After she suffered years of stress on her body, frequent hospitalizations, and never fully recovered from her smallpox infection, Army doctors finally took a closer look at William Cathay and discovered the truth. She was honorably discharged in 1868 and moved to Fort Union, New Mexico, where she went to work as a cook.
The Buffalo Soldiers went on to fight in the Indian Wars of the American West and the Spanish-American War. Cathay Williams moved to Colorado. She became a seamstress and her story remained untold in the wider press for almost a decade. In 1874, a reporter from the St. Louis Daily Times heard rumors of a Black woman who had served in and was honorably discharged from the Army and published an account two years later. Williams’ medical troubles followed her for the rest of her life. She was known to have suffered from neuralgia (pain along certain nerves) and diabetes (from which she lost all her toes), but her applications for medical pensions from the Army were denied. No one knows precisely when or where she died or at what age.
The Global Association of Buffalo Soldiers Recognition and Riding Club Inc. finally recognized Williams’ historic service after almost 150 years. In 2015, it unveiled a monument bench for Pvt. Cathay Williams on the Walk of Honor at the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, Georgia.”
– Blake Stilwell
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Black Servicewomen
Cathay Williams
Cathay Williams was born a slave in Independence, Mo., in 1844. As she grew up, she worked as a house slave on a plantation near Jefferson City, Mo. Early in the Civil War, Jefferson City was conquered by Union troops, and captured slaves were pressed into service for the Union Army. Williams was forced to serve in the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment. She traveled with the Union Army through Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. When the Civil War ended, Williams was working at Jefferson Barracks, south of St. Louis.
After the Civil War, the U.S. Congress established the first peacetime all-black regiments in the U.S. Army. They were known as Buffalo Soldiers. Cathay Williams posed as a man, called herself William Cathay, and joined the 38th Regiment. She is now known to be the first African-American female to enlist, and the only person believed to have served in the U.S. Army posing as a man. After being organized at Jefferson Barracks, the 38th Infantry was stationed in the New Mexico Territory and along the transcontinental railroads during their construction. Williams contracted smallpox shortly after enlisting and was hospitalized frequently after that. The post-surgeon finally discovered William Cathay was a woman, and she was discharged from the army in 1868.
“There is no gravestone marking the final resting place of Cathay Williams. Nor is there one for her alter ego, Private William Cathey, who served with the 38th Infantry on the western frontier from 1866 to 1868. “
Cathy Williams
1862 US Union soldier Cathy Williams. She had to pose as a male to be enlisted. She was part of the 38 Regiment, Infantry Division, and was called a Buffalo Soldier.
Cathay Williams was an African-American soldier who enlisted in the United States Army under the pseudonym William Cathay. She was the first Black woman to enlist, and the only documented woman to serve in the United States Army posing as a man during the American Indian Wars. (Wikipedia)
Born: September 1844, Independence, MO
Died: 1893, Trinidad, CO
Other names: John Williams, William Cathay
Rank: Private
Unit: 38th U.S. Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army (Buffalo soldier)
Years of service: 1866–1868
African American WACS
Group of African American members of the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) posing for a group photo in uniform during World War 2, 1940. (Photo by Afro-American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images).
The Senate passed legislation to award the only all-Black Women’s Army Corps (WACs) deployed overseas during World War II the Congressional Gold Medal. The “Six Triple Eight” self-contained postal unit completed the seemingly impossible task of tackling the mail backlog during the final months of the war.
Who were the WACs and what did they do?
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), a U.S. Army unit created during World War II to enable women to serve in noncombat positions. Never before had women, except nurses, served within the ranks of the U.S. Army. With the establishment of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), more than 150,000 did so.
African-American women joined the WAC during World War II seeking opportunity and a chance to support the war effort. For some, the experience was disappointing. Courtesy of the National Archives at College Park/Wikimedia Commons. – Captain Adams drilling her company at the first W.A.A.C. training center in Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1943. – Credit… National Archives.
“In January 1945, a C-54 cargo plane carrying a group of young Army officers departed an Air Transport Command terminal in Washington for war-torn Europe. Among the passengers was a 26-year-old major named Charity Adams, who was quietly making history as the first African-American commanding officer in the Women’s Army Corps to be deployed to a theater of war. As the plane ascended over the Atlantic, she still wasn’t sure where she was headed or what she would be doing there. Her orders, marked “Secret,” were to be unsealed in flight. When she opened the envelope, the documents revealed only that her destination was somewhere in the British Isles; she would be briefed on the particulars of the mission once on the ground.
A couple of weeks later, Adams stood on a windswept parade field in Birmingham, England, addressing a formation of hundreds of Black soldiers in khaki-skirted uniforms. She had been placed in command of a battalion that would soon number 855 women. She could see that many were scared and tired, still reeling from a treacherous 11-day journey from the United States by sea spent dodging torpedoes and German U-boats. Groans rippled through the ranks as Adams explained that they would begin work immediately. As the newly created 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, their mission was neither glamorous nor particularly thrilling. The work would be grueling, the hours long, and what little sleep they were allotted would be prone to interruption by air raids. Progress would be measured by the depletion of undelivered mail they had been summoned to England to sort out. With the war now at its bloody peak, mail was indispensable for morale, but delivering it had become a towering logistical challenge. The backlog piled haphazardly in cavernous hangars, amounted to more than 17 million letters and packages addressed to Allied military personnel scattered across Europe.”
Despite her can-do attitude, Adams believed that she and her troops had been set up for failure. Before the formation of the Six Triple Eight, as the battalion was known, it was unfathomable that a unit composed entirely of Black women would be posted overseas and trusted with such a monumental task. The Six Triple Eight was an experiment — a pass-fail test to determine the value Black women brought to the military. Years of unyielding pressure from civil rights activists, including the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, had convinced the War Department to give them a shot, but those who strongly opposed their inclusion in the ranks expected to be validated by seeing them fail. “The eyes of the public would be upon us, waiting for one slip in our conduct or performance,” Adams later recalled in her memoir. She knew that simply getting the job done wouldn’t be enough. The Six Triple Eight would need to not only pass the test but also, as Adams wrote, prove to “be the best WAC unit ever sent into a foreign theater.”
A pastor’s daughter from Columbia, S.C., Adams dropped out of graduate school to join the war effort in the summer of 1942, after the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (W.A.A.C.) announced that it was accepting 40 Black women into its first officer-candidate school. Black civic leaders were calling for African-American men and women to volunteer for military service and fight for equal rights overseas; as Adams soon learned, however, the arbitrary constraints of Jim Crow applied even in matters of national security. At the ceremony that culminated the W.A.A.C. officer course, the candidates were commissioned as third officers, equivalent to Army second lieutenants, in alphabetical order by last name. Though Adams topped the list, she watched all the white candidates cross the stage before her name was called and she officially became the first Black woman ever commissioned in the corps.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/magazine/6888th-battalion-charity-adams.html
What was the purpose of WAC and waves?
During this time the Navy also established the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) program, with more than 100,000 women joining and performing critical jobs including military intelligence, cryptography, and parachute rigging.
Do the WACs still exist?
The WAC was disbanded in 1978, and all units were integrated with male units.
The 6888th Battalion took part in a parade in May 1945 in honor of Joan of Arc at the marketplace in Rouen, France, where she was burned at the stake. Credit…National Archives
Nurses In The Southwest Pacific
A contingent of fifteen nurses arrived in the Southwest Pacific area after receiving their first batch of home mail at their station at the 268th Station Hospital in Australia, on November 29, 1943. Image courtesy National Archives. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion helped connect soldiers on the front lines with their families back home.
“In 1927, an unlikely friendship arose between educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune and future First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, based on a shared belief in the power of education. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, Bethune served as an advisor on minority issues and eventually was named Director of Negro Affairs in 1939. Her work with the administration led to the creation of the Black Cabinet, an informal group of advisors who worked on issues facing Black communities across the United States. The Black Cabinet helped the Roosevelt administration draft executive orders that ended the exclusion of Black Americans in the Army during World War II. In 1944, with the support of the First Lady, Bethune pushed for the admittance of Black women in the military, through inclusion in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), a branch of the Army created in 1942. Though there was a backlash against having women in uniform from conservative elements in military leadership, tens of thousands of women were trained in a variety of non-combat specialties that were thought appropriate for women at the time: switchboard operation, baking, mechanics, stenography, postal work, and more.
All were critical to the operation of the Army during wartime. Sending and receiving mail, for example, was a lifeline for soldiers, and the only way to stay connected to the friends and families they left behind. In 1945 alone, more than 3.3 billion pieces of mail went through the military postal service. Around 8 million Americans were stationed in Europe that year. The task of organizing and delivering all that mail was daunting, and a shortage of qualified postal workers led to a massive backlog. Army officers reported that the undelivered mail was hurting morale. Something had to be done, and a unique WAC battalion answered the call
THE TASK OF SIFTING THROUGH this growing stack of letters and packages—some of which had been mailed years before—was given to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female battalion to serve overseas during World War II. The 6888th—nicknamed “Six Triple Eight” and led by Major Charity Adams Earley—was originally expected to sort through 7 million pieces of mail and packages in Birmingham, England, over six months. They did the job in three.”
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion served in Birmingham, England; Rouen, France; and Paris between February 1945 and February 1946. NATIONAL ARCHIVE
Black American Nurses
Black American nurses commissioned second lieutenants in the United States Army Nurses Corps to limber up their muscles in an early morning workout during an advanced training course at a camp in Australia, in February 1944. Image courtesy National Archives. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
Fast Facts about Women in the Wartime Industry
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By 1944, 1 out of 5 defense workers was a woman who had recently been a student
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By 1944 1 out of 3 defense workers were former full-time homemakers
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World War II was the first time in U.S. history that married women outnumbered single women workers. 1
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The largest employers of women during World War II were airplane manufacturers such as Boeing Aircraft, Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, and Douglass Aircraft Company. Other major employers included Chrysler, Goodyear, and Ford.
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Between 1940 and 1960 the number of working women doubled, rising from 15% of the workforce to 30%. Working mothers increased by 400%.
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Most trade unions maintained separate seniority lists for men and women but by 1944 more than 3 million women made up 22% of all trade union membership in the U.S.
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A survey taken immediately after WWII by the Bureau of Women Workers revealed 75% of women workers preferred to remain employed outside their homes 2
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By 1955, more women worked in the labor force than during World War II
During the Great Depression, (1929-World War II) women were discouraged from working so the few jobs available could go to male breadwinners. To encourage women into the workforce, the federal government’s War Manpower Commission, War Production Board, and defense industries launched a massive campaign centered around recruitment posters. The substantial need for war supplies coupled with the staggering number of men drafted into the war created mass vacancies in factories across the nation.
The War Department seized the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: get the soldiers their mail and grant Black women fuller participation in the war. By that point, Adams had ascended to the rank of major and had served in various administrative and leadership roles. She was training recruits in Fort Des Moines when her commander asked how she would feel about an assignment in Europe. She was hesitant at first, concerned that she might be out of her depth leading troops overseas. But it seems that whatever doubts she harbored vanished by the time she arrived on the ground. She was allotted six months to complete her mission. The Six Triple Eight would do it in three.
The Six Triple Eight and civilian postal employees sorted mail in France in November 1945, two months after the war ended.
The Six Triple Eight and civilian postal employees sorted mail in France in November 1945, two months after the war ended. Credit… National Archives
Economist Theresa Wolfson described the tension women felt in 1942 after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor:
“It is not easy to forget the propaganda of two decades [during the Great Depression] even in the face of a national emergency such as a great war. Women themselves doubted their ability to do a man’s job. Married women with families were loath to leave their homes; society had made so little provision for the thousands of jobs that a homemaker must tackle. A
Who were the Black Rosies?
“The most prominent image of Rosie the Riveter popularized in American culture was the version featured on the “We Can Do It!” posters created by the United States government. This Rosie bears a striking likeness to Rockwell’s Rosie, but she is less masculine. While Rockwell’s Rosie has bulging arm muscles, this second Rosie poses with a flexed arm, hair gently tucked into a bandana, and perfectly applied makeup. This version of Rosie the Riveter employed by the United States government was popular because it appealed to the sense of patriotism and common goal of the Second World War while showing that women could retain their femininity and womanhood in their service. Every Rosie the Riveter image played to this prevailing sense of patriotism that abounded in America during World War II. The government and employers utilized patriotism as a primary motivator to recruit women for war work. Most American women had husbands, brothers, sons, and fiancés fighting on the frontlines of the war, so the women felt compelled to provide to make an equally significant contribution as citizens at home. 3 In many cases, women had to continue maintaining their households and caring for their children, while also taking a full-time job.”
The roles Black Rosies played in the war effort ran the gamut.
African American female riveter sitting on a huge piece of machinery during WWII at Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 1942. Time Life Pictures/Women’s Bureau/National Archives/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
They worked in factories as sheet metal workers and munitions and explosive assemblers; in navy yards as shipbuilders and along assembly lines as electricians.
Welders prepared to work on SS George Washington Carver in Richmond, California, in 1943. E. F. Joseph/Anthony Potter Collection/Getty Images
They were administrators, welders, railroad conductors, and more.
In 1945, in a written report compiled at the end of the war, Kathryn Blood, a researcher of the Department of Labor studying the wartime contributions of Black women, wrote the following about the Black Rosies:
“The contribution [of Black women] is one which this nation would be unwise to forget or evaluate falsely.”
But for decades, the efforts of Black Rosies went largely unrecognized—until African American historians, playwrights, and filmmakers like Mr. Cooke began, in the 21st century, shedding light on their contributions.
“These women, I truly believe, are some of the most significant women of the 20th century,” says Mr. Cooke.
“At the time, we didn’t think about it as wanting recognition,” says Mrs. Wilson. “But now it does feel nice to know that the work we did is being remembered.”
“Members of the battalion received the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the Women’s Army Corps Service Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal, but wider recognition for their accomplishments didn’t come for another 60 years. In 2009, three former members of the unit, Alyce Dixon, Mary Ragland, and Gladys Shuster Carter, attended a commendation ceremony at the Military Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. On November 30, 2018, a monument dedicated to the 6888th was built at the Buffalo Soldier Monument Park in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, consisting of a 25-inch bronze bust of commanding officer Major Adams. The back panel has the names of the 800-plus women who were assigned to the unit, by state of origin. On March 14, 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill awarding the battalion the Congressional Gold Medal.
The legacy of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion goes beyond their incredible work during World War II. The women and their stories have been included in exhibits, books, documentaries, and even a forthcoming Netflix film directed by Tyler Perry called Six Triple Eight starring Kerry Washington and Oprah Winfrey. Even as Jim Crow laws persisted at home, the 6888th provided an intimate and necessary connection between soldiers on the front line and their families on the home front. They left their mark in hearts and minds.”
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