“Six-Triple Eight” is the incredible story of the first and only Army Corps battalion of all African-American women allowed to serve in Europe during WWII. The battalion was recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their outstanding achievements.

For more than 30 years, Charlotte Blake Alston has graced stages in venues throughout North American and abroad, including the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institution, and the Kimmel Center. She has narrated for symphony orchestras and performed at storytelling festivals all over the world. Blake Alston is a frequent guest artist at universities, schools, museums and cultural arts centers, but the former elementary school teacher also loves appearing at day cares for special needs children, as well as prisons and youth detention centers.

Blake Alston’s storytelling skills were honed in childhood when her father introduced her to the work of African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her solo performances are often enhanced with traditional African instruments such as the djembe, mbira, and the 21-string kora. In 1999, she studied the kora and West African tradition of storytelling in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau.