She is portrayed by Kerry Washington as a lead character in 2024 film The Six Triple Eight showing the experience of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion during their service in Europe.

One of her younger brothers, John Hurst Adams, went on to become a Bishop within the AME and founded the Congress of National Black Churches.

She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School as valedictorian and from Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1938, majoring in math and physics.

[1] Charity Adams Earley was initiated into the Beta chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. while attending Wilberforce University.

After graduation, she returned to Columbia, where she taught mathematics at the local high school while studying part-time for a M.A.

At the time, the U.S. Army was still segregated, so she was placed in a company with fellow female African-American women officers and stationed at Fort Des Moines.

[5] By the completion of the war, Lieutenant Colonel Adams was the highest ranking African-American woman in the military.

[1] On another occasion, when a general stated, "I'm going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit", then-Major Adams responded: "Over my dead body, sir.

[4] She then began to file charges against him for using "language stressing racial segregation" and ignoring a directive from Allied headquarters.

[4] Adams encouraged her battalion to socialize with white men coming back from the front and even the residents of wherever they were stationed.

Next she worked at the Veterans Administration in Cleveland, Ohio, but soon left to teach at the Miller Academy of Fine Arts.

[4] Adams received many honors and awards, including a Woman of the Year from the National Council of Negro Women in 1946, the Top Ten Women of the Miami Valley Dayton Daily News in 1965, and Service to the Community Award from the Ohio State Senate in 1989.

She was also inducted into the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame and named citizen of the year by The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 1991.

On March 22, 2022, President Biden signed legislation awarding Charity Adams and the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.

[11] On October 6, 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin accepted the recommendation and directed that the name change occur no later than January 1, 2024.