‘A story ... to celebrate.’ Film recognizes women, Kentuckians from special WWII unit

During World War II, a backlog of mail intended for American soldiers, Red Cross workers and government officials serving in Europe piled up for two years, filling warehouses in Birmingham, England, from floor to ceiling.

The task of sorting it all fell to a unit of more than 800 Black women in the Women’s Army Corps. Despite difficult working conditions that included racism and sexism, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion adopted the slogan “No mail, low morale” and worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week until its job was done, and ahead of schedule, no less.

It was the only military unit made up of Black women that served overseas during World War II, and they had to fight to get there.

The battalion’s story was made into a 2019 documentary, “The Six Triple Eight,” and it’s coming to Central Kentucky next week.

Eighteen of the women in the 6888 were Kentuckians, according to the Army Women’s Foundation.

One, Venus B. Cox, was from Fayette County. Cox, who was born in 1917, enlisted in 1943 and worked in a tobacco factory before she joined the military, said Reinette Jones, a librarian in the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Kentucky.

“These were some of the first Black women in the military,” said Jones, who co-founded the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database.

Jones has recently been working to find family members of the Kentucky women who served in the unit and is developing an entry on their service with the 6888th for the database.

She said a unit comprised of Black female service members with the Women’s Army Corps was stationed at Camp Breckinridge in Western Kentucky during World War II. The conditions the women in that unit worked under were challenging, to say the least.

“Men would burst into the women’s barracks at night,” she said. They had been trained as supply clerks but were assigned tasks like “mopping floors and washing down walls and that type of thing.” Six women ultimately resigned in protest after a strike.

In 1945, three Black women serving in the WAC in Kentucky were beaten by police in Elizabethtown because they were sitting in a whites-only waiting room at a bus station. One spent a week in the hospital recovering, Jones said.

“There have been all these women who gave their service to this country and have never been recognized,” said Jones.

The effort to host a screening of “The Six Triple Eight” in Lexington started with Barbara Kent, who directs Eastern Kentucky University’s Office of Military and Veterans Affairs. She first learned of the women’s service and the film in a magazine article earlier this year.

“I was like, oh my gosh, I’d never heard of this unit,” she said.

Kent, an Army veteran who is the first woman and the first enlisted person to serve in her position at EKU, emailed the documentary’s producer, Elizabeth Helm-Frazier.

Helm-Frazier will participate in a screening of the film at 10 a.m. Monday on the EKU campus. The screening, which is open to the public, will be held in Room 108 of EKU’s Crabbe Library. Attendees are asked to register in advance online.

A second screening is closed to the public and is being offered by invitation only the following day at the Lyric Theatre in Lexington.

Kent said plans are in the works for another public showing this fall, and she’d also like to find ways to get the film into Kentucky schools.

She said she hopes it will inspire young women, particularly young women of color.

“For me as a female veteran, I stand on their shoulders,” she said of the women of the 6888th battalion. “This is a story that we want to celebrate and be joyful about.”