Name: Major Margaret E. Barnes JONES

Date of Notice: 25 April 2000

Maj. Margaret E. B. Jones Dies Maj. Margaret E. B. Jones Dies Served in Black WWII Unit
Margaret E. Barnes Jones, 89, a retired Army major who served with the only battalion of African American military women sent overseas during World War II, died of congestive heart failure April 11 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She had lived in Alexandria since 1980.
 

Maj. Jones was one of 32 officers who accompanied more than 800 enlisted women to Scotland early in 1945 to work as a special wartime postal unit.
The 6888th Central Postal Directory had been formed after pressure from civil rights organizations and black newspapers forced the military to use African American women in meaningful Army jobs. The battalion's initial mission was to redirect mail addressed to killed or missing military personnel after the D-Day assault in France, which had scattered soldiers across the country.
 

Maj. Jones was the public relations officer for the battalion, which worked round-the-clock to clear a backlog of Christmas mail. The operation had been run by enlisted men and civilians, and it was in chaos, Army historians later recalled. A warehouse was filled with 3 million parcels alone; packages of spoiled cakes and cookies filled still another room patrolled by rats that were said to be as large as cats. Working round-the-clock, and averaging 65,000 pieces of mail a shift, the women managed to clean the place out in three months.
Assigned to a former school in Birmingham, England, and later to posts in France, the battalion was responsible for redirecting mail to more than 7 million people. Mail from home was considered vital to wartime morale, and the 6888th, which kept cards tracking each person being served, broke records for its distribution.
 

Maj. Jones, a native of Oberlin, Ohio, [and 1929 graduate of Oberlin High School] was among the first African American women commissioned as officers in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. She had studied for three years at Howard University, where she later received a bachelor's degree and where her brother, Sam Barnes, was later athletic director. Sam Barnes was one of the so-called Golden 13, the first black officers commissioned in the Navy.
 

Federal policy during World War II was to limit participation by African Americans in the armed forces to 10 percent. When 400 women were accepted as officer candidates for the WAACS, the 40 African American women among them came to be known as "10 percenters." The military and its facilities remained segregated, for both enlisted personnel and officers, until President Harry S. Truman issued a desegregation order in 1949. African American women in training were similar in most respects to the white trainees, according to publications of the Army Center of Military History: Nearly 80 percent had attended college, and most had worked as teachers and office workers. In all, 6,520 black women served in the Army in World War II.
 

Maj. Jones's first post as an officer was as executive officer of a company of African American women in Kentucky. The company was assigned to clean floors and latrines in the Fort Breckinridge hospital and to work in the post laundry. It was there that she began working to secure better assignments for the women under her command. A book about the 6888th, "To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race," by Brenda L. Moore, describes similar efforts of battalion members to overcome racism and sexism to serve their country during World War II. African American women had served as nurses in previous wars, but World War II marked the first time they joined the rank-and-file service. After the war, and her graduation from Howard, Maj. Jones did graduate work in American history at the University of Minnesota. She was recalled to active duty in 1949, and placed in command of a training company at Fort Lee in Virginia. Later posts included tours doing administrative work at the engineering school at Fort Belvoir, an overseas assignment in France and as a special services officer in Kansas. She retired as chief of administration at Maison Fort in France and later accompanied her husband to a post in Germany, where she was president of an officers' wives club.
Her military honors included the Army Commendation Medal. She also received awards from the World War II Commemoration Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Armed Forces Hostess Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
 

She was a volunteer with the NAACP, the Urban League, the African American Women's Club, Women in Service for America Memorial Committee, Black Women United for Action, the Armed Forces Officers Wives Club of Washington, Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria and the Circle Club of the Kennedy Center.

Survivors include her husband, retired Army Maj. Everett Jones of Alexandria.
Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, April 25, 2000, p. B7