Indiana Hunt-Martin Post Office Building

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2142, to honor Ms. Indiana Hunt-Martin, a member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) groundbreaking 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion (Six Triple Eight), the only all-black WAC battalion deployed overseas during WWII.

As a cosponsor of this bill and the author of the House measure to award a Congressional Gold Medal to all the women of the Six Triple Eight that the Congress will soon enact, Ms. Hunt-Martin's story is the story of most of the women who served in the 6888.

According to her daughter, ``she was born in a time and place where share cropping, lynching, and hatred of people, especially males of color were everyday occurrences.''

Yet, she was not deterred from serving her country. Born in Georgia, she moved to New York in the 1920's when she was still a young child. After graduating high school, she read about an effort by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women, to ensure that women of color could join the war effort as part of the WAC.

So she applied. And waited. And after, her application was apparently ``lost'', she did not give up. She applied again, was accepted, and enlisted.

She was subsequently chosen to serve in the Six Triple Eight. And served honorably with that groundbreaking unit.

After her military service, she worked for the New York State Department of Labor, retiring after some 40 years of service. In 2014, in a story that is very familiar to me, she reached out to her local congressman, Mr. Higgins, for help getting the medals she had earned through her service so many decades earlier. This story is familiar to me because my own constituent, Ms. Anna Mae Robertson, who also served with the Six Triple Eight, similarly reached out to my office around the same time to help her get the service medals she had earned.

This evening, I will have the honor of hosting Ms. Hunt-Martin's daughter in my office as we celebrate the passage of this bill and my Six Triple Eight Gold Medal bill (H.R. 1012/S. 321). While Ms. Hunt- Martin and the vast majority of the women who served with the 6888 may no longer be with us, today we make sure that their service and sacrifice is not forgotten.

As noted by Debbera Ranson, the commander and founder of the Johnetta R. Coles AmVets post in Buffalo, NY, ``There are so many times when African American soldiers have done wonderful things but it takes forever for them to get recognized. Many times, the honors that they eventually received--if they even do--is way after they have passed. And so, as we do these different honors, at least family members will be able to enjoy knowing that their loved ones have been honored.''

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