Anna Mae Robertson, one of the final living members of the esteemed “Six Triple Eight” military unit, has died at the age of 101.
The surviving veterans and those who have passed away were able to be celebrated on a global scale thanks to Tyler Perry’s movie, The Six Triple Eight, which premiered on Netflix last year.
As Blavity reported, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion were the only Black female unit in the armed forces appointed to carry out a duty in Europe during World War II. Although they were given a mission to help organize 17 pieces of mail, it was deemed impossible due to other units that failed to accomplish the task. To the military’s surprise, they completed the assignment in three months, which was 90 days ahead of the deadline.
What legacy did the women of ‘Six Triple Eight’ leave behind?
In April, the entire group was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal for their outstanding and innovative work during the war, which reconnected soldiers with their families.
“They broke barriers,” the Mississippi native’s granddaughter, Kenya Robertson, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview. “It took about 70 or so years for the world to know the role of Anna Robertson and the women of Six Triple Eight played in War World II [sic].”
As a means to survive after her mother died, Roberson joined the army when she was 19.
“I felt as though we were relieving a man who could go over and fight. We could do what the men had been doing,” she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2014.
Following her military service, Robertson traveled to Milwaukee to celebrate a comrade of the Six Triple Eight’s wedding. She eventually settled in the city and became a nurse’s aide at the local Veterans Affairs hospital.
Anna Mae Robertson is being remembered for her service
At 98 years old, Robertson received the Congressional Gold Medal at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center for her contributions to reviving the mailing system in June 2022, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore expressed her condolences, saying she stands with the community in honoring Robertson’s groundbreaking contributions and grieving her passing.
“I am thankful that my constituent, Ms. Robertson, was able to receive her flowers while she could still smell them,” Moore said in a May 31 statement, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
