COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Six Triple Eight unit was the only unit made up entirely of Black women in World War II and one of them called Cobb County home.
Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell spoke with family members of Lettie Roberta Williams who deployed overseas with the unit in 1945.
The 855 women of the Six Triple Eight Central Postal Directory Battalion were tasked with working around the clock in extremely poor conditions to sort the massive backlog of mail that had been stacked in a warehouse.
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“You’re helping these families who did not know where there soldiers were, whether they were deceased, missing, alive,” Williams’ great-great-niece Trina Delk said.
After just three months, the Six Triple Eight had given countless families the answers they had been missing and raising morale among soldiers.
Delk and Lacresia Couser say they knew Williams served in the war, but didn’t know the extent of what her unit went through until they watched the movie “The Six Triple Eight” from filmmaker Tyler Perry.
“They started rolling the credits of the names, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Couser said. “This is amazing. This was my great-great-aunt.”
“I actually watched it twice because I was just in awe,” Delk said.
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Williams was the first Black woman in Marietta to enlist in the Army Corps.
“She was the first Black librarian of Cobb County,” Couser remembered.
“She worked at the Housing Authority. She helped develop the YMCA,” Delk said.
Delk said her great-great-aunt inspired her to not be afraid to join male-dominated fields, prompting her to join the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office.
“When I started, I was with mostly men. I ended up training some of the officers and the civilians. Don’t let it be just a male thing that you can’t do it, just know you can,” Delk said.
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