Edition: U.S. / Global

Margaret Jones, 89, Officer in Black Army Unit

Published: April 27, 2000

Margaret E. B. Jones, a retired Army major who served with the only battalion of African-American women to serve overseas in World War II, died on April 11 at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. She was 89.

Mrs. Jones spent most of her adult life in military service and had lived in Alexandria, Va., since 1980, said her husband, Everett Jones, a retired Army major.

In 1945, Mrs. Jones, then Second Lieutenant Barnes, was one of 31 officers who accompanied more than 700 enlisted members of the Women's Army Corps' 6888th Battalion when they were sent to England. The battalion had been formed after civil rights organizations and black newspapers complained that the military was not using African-American women in meaningful jobs.

When the battalion arrived in Britain, members were told to sort through piles of mail that filled two hangars in the countryside, said Charity Adams Earley, who was the battalion's commanding officer.

Mrs. Earley said that white women serving in Europe were working as drivers for officers or doing other tasks equivalent to their male counterparts, and the women of the 6888th had hoped for the same kinds of duties.

''They told us that if we were going overseas, we would be given assignments men had,'' she recalled from her home in Dayton, Ohio. ''That was a fairy tale.''

Instead, in the sealed orders they received, which they were not permitted to open until the planes carrying them to Britain were in the air, they learned they would be assigned to the postal unit. But soon, Mrs. Earley said, the women realized how vital their new job was to troop morale in wartime Europe.

The women moved three million pieces of mail in three months, much of it letters sent to soldiers who had been transferred, had died, or been scattered after the D-Day assault in France.

''To move the mail with them was a really tough job,'' said Judith Bellafaire, curator of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Washington. ''They worked in 24-hour shifts and they cleared that mail out and were credited with raising the morale of the troops. They have a lot to be proud of.''

Mrs. Jones was in charge of public relations for the battalion, which broke records for the amount of mail it distributed.

Some of the mail, which had been sitting in storage for months, contained spoiled cakes and cookies, and there was even a package of steaks a mother had sent to her son overseas, Mrs. Earley recalled.

Margaret Ellen Barnes was born on Jan. 7, 1911, in Oberlin, Ohio. Her mother, Margaret Sallee Barnes, was active in community and civil rights groups, and her father, James D. Barnes, worked as a chef. Her mother's parents had been slaves in Kentucky, and she reared her children to value education and to stand up for their rights.

After three years at Howard University, where she later received a bachelor's degree, Margaret Barnes joined the military in 1943, a time when it was racially segregated and there were few places for women. She signed up for the same reasons many men did at that time, said her husband: ''She wanted to do something for her country.''

Mrs. Jones became one of the first African-American women commissioned as an officer in the Women's Army Corps. At the time, African-Americans were limited to 10 percent of the overall troops, said the Army Center of Military History. When 400 women were accepted as officer candidates for the WAC's, the 40 black women became known as the Ten Percenters.

Ordered to Fort Breckenridge, Kan., after her basic training, she became the executive officer of a company that consisted of 175 black women. Even though many of the women had college educations, they were assigned to cleaning floors and latrines in the hospital and working in the post laundry.

Mrs. Jones complained to a superior officer, and persuaded him to reassign them to other duties, according to a book about the 6888th Battalion, ''To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race,'' (New York University Press, 1996) by Brenda L. Moore.

After the war, Major Barnes returned to Howard to complete her degree. She then 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, Va. After her marriage in 1953, her husband was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and she to Fort Belvoir, Va. Later they were both sent, separately, to France, and then she was assigned 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.

She is survived by her husband.