diff --git a/Include/py_curses.h b/Include/py_curses.h
index f38f76543b1..e4c0a6e2c59 100644
--- a/Include/py_curses.h
+++ b/Include/py_curses.h
@@ -10,7 +10,12 @@
 #ifdef	_BSD_WCHAR_T_DEFINED_
 #define _WCHAR_T
 #endif
-#endif
+
+/* the following define is necessary for OS X 10.6; without it, the
+   Apple-supplied ncurses.h sets NCURSES_OPAQUE to 1, and then Python
+   can't get at the WINDOW flags field. */
+#define NCURSES_OPAQUE 0
+#endif /* __APPLE__ */
 
 #ifdef __FreeBSD__
 /*
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index def387d430d..94f43996390 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -1293,6 +1293,8 @@ C-API
 Extension Modules
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #6848: Fix curses module build failure on OS X 10.6.
+
 - Fix a segfault in expat when given a specially crafted input lead to the
   tokenizer not stopping.