Clinic at Milwaukee VA Complex Could Be Renamed For Famed ‘Six-Triple-Eight’ Member
Veteran Anna Mae Robertson served in the only battalion of Black women to serve abroad during the war.
Milwaukee VA Medical Center. (Public Domain).
Anna Mae Robertson of Milwaukee served in the revered 6888th battalion during World War II — part of the only battalion of Black women to serve abroad during the war. Robertson died died on May 30 at 101.
Now, if a bipartisan push in Congress succeeds, she could soon have the women’s clinic at the Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center named after her.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, recently introduced a bill that would rename the clinic.
“It seemed appropriate to me, that as a member of the storied ‘Six Triple Eight,’ and of course a member of the Milwaukee community who worked at Zablocki Veterans Center … to name the women’s health clinic in Milwaukee as the Anna Mae Robertson VA Well Women Clinic,” Moore said.
The bill is cosponsored by Wisconsin Republican Reps. Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald and Tony Wied, along with Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan. Moore said she is seeking sponsorships from GOP Reps. Glenn Grothman, Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany, as well.
“We’re going for 100 percent of sponsorship of this bill from the Wisconsin delegation,” Moore said. “We know how much, on a bipartisan basis, Congress cares about veterans, and this is a very special veteran who lived to be 101 years old.”
Robertson served in the Women’s Army Corps, in the now-famous 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the Army’s first all-Black female unit to be sent overseas. In 1945, during World War II, they were tasked with boosting soldiers’ morale by sorting a yearslong backlog of mail in England, linking service members to their loved ones back home. The 855-women unit completed a task forecasted to take six months in only three. Nicknamed the “Six-Triple Eight,” the battalion was featured in a 2024 Netflix film starring Kerry Washington.
In a 2014 oral history with the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Robertson said she and her brother enlisted after their mother died.
“I had no one to support us,” she said. “We [were] going to have to do something, so that’s what I decided I was going to do. The Army was all right with me. I didn’t have any complaints about it at all.”
She reflected humbly on her service, telling the interviewee: “It’s just something that I did.”
After Robertson was discharged from the Army, she made her way to Milwaukee and later worked as a nurse’s aide at Zablocki, formerly Wood Veterans Hospital. She went on to raise eight children in the city.
Robertson was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in April, after Moore introduced a bill to honor the Six Triple Eight unit in 2021. Congress voted to bestow it, and former President Joe Biden signed the act into law in 2022.
Moore learned from speaking with descendants of the unit that many Six Triple Eight members didn’t often speak about their service or its significance.
“Literally another example of ‘Hidden Figures’ among Black women,” Moore said, referencing a 2016 book and film about Black women working at NASA during the 1950s Space Race. “I think Anna Mae Robertson deserves this honor because she should be credited with really lifting up the stature of this, to the point that they could get that gold medal.”
Milwaukee VA clinic could be named after Black woman who served in World War II unit shown in Netflix film was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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