African-American postal workers in the 20th century

The 19th century was a time of enormous change in the postal workforce – from 1802, when Congress banned African Americans from carrying U.S. Mail, to the late 1860s, when newly-enfranchised African Americans began receiving appointments as postmasters, clerks, and city letter carriers. As the 20th century neared, the political pendulum began to swing backwards, and many gains of the immediate post-Civil War period were lost. 

In the early 20th century many African Americans found steady, valuable jobs in urban Post Offices, but little room for advancement.  Despite discriminatory employment practices, the Post Office Department was a rare avenue of opportunity for African Americans – postal jobs were coveted positions that helped lead to the emergence of a black middle class. 

A new era of opportunity for African-American workers began in the 1940s, when U.S. Presidents – spurred on both by civil rights organizations and war-time necessity – began using their powers of office to encourage equal opportunity in the workplace.  In the 1960s the number of African-American employees promoted to supervisory positions grew exponentially, and African Americans were appointed as postmasters of the nation’s three largest Post Offices – New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. By the end of the 20th century African Americans comprised 21 percent of all postal employees, serving at all levels of the Postal Service.

Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal”

[Roosevelt] is not so much now an American President as he is the President of the black belt. Senator Hernando D. Money to the U.S. Senate, 1903^[1]

In September 1901, at age 42, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President in U.S. history following the assassination of William McKinley.  A native New Yorker who was sympathetic to civil rights, Roosevelt took office at a time when southern states were steadily stripping away black voting rights and racism was on the rise.  He ignited a firestorm of protest among southern politicians just a month after taking office by inviting Booker T. Washington, the influential black author and educator, to dine at the White House.  The dinner, which became known as “the Booker Washington incident,” was widely vilified by the southern press, which was outraged that a U.S. President had treated a black man as a social equal.   

Roosevelt, who became famous for his belief that all Americans deserved a “square deal,” enunciated his policy on fairness in federal appointments in a letter of November 27, 1902:

it is and should be my consistent policy in every State, where their numbers warranted it, to recognize colored men of good repute and standing in making appointments to office. . . I can not consent to take the position that the door of hope – the door of opportunity – is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.^[2]

In January 1903 Roosevelt tested the power of the federal government to “interfere in the race problem” when he refused to allow the town of Indianola, Mississippi, to drive out its African-American postmaster. Roosevelt chose to suspend service at the Indianola Post Office rather than accept the resignation of Postmaster Minnie Cox, who had provided excellent service, and appoint a white man in her place.^[3]  His action stirred the national debate about race, North and South, including in the U.S. Senate. 

Senator Hernando Money of Mississippi asserted that Roosevelt’s liberalism towards African Americans only fanned the flames of prejudice:

The social equality which has been manifested here lately and exemplified here lately in high places has brought out this race prejudice to a point where, while in the South they had been tolerating negro postmasters, they have now got to the point where they do not want to do so any longer . . . ^[4]

Another account of the Roosevelt administration standing by an African-American appointee arose in 1903 when Postmaster General Henry C. Payne suspended rural mail delivery in a Tennessee community whose African-American carrier had been held up and threatened by armed, masked men.  Payne stated that the government had two options:  send U.S. troops to protect the mail carrier on his route, or suspend the route.  Replacing the carrier with a white man, simply because some customers disapproved of a black mail carrier, was apparently not an option Payne considered. He explained:

It is not the business of the government to force mail service upon the people of any part of the country.  . .  when the people in the localities which object to the appointees of this department are willing to accept them and permit them to perform their duties unmolested these sections will be given the benefit of the mails.^[5]

In some parts of the South, African-American appointees were threatened into resigning or not taking office.  In 1904 the Humphrey, Arkansas, Post Office was dynamited in the middle of the night and completely destroyed, reportedly because some of the town’s citizens objected to the appointment of a black postmaster.

Despite the hardships, many African Americans sought work in Post Offices.  In 1907 one southern white editorialist complained that “there is scarcely a post office of a city in the south that is not overrun by negroes – just as is the case with the railway mail service.”^[6]  Reportedly, most applicants for postal jobs in the South were black.  An article in the June 7, 1908, issue of The Washington Post noted:

Comparatively well educated negroes are willing, indeed, glad, to take minor clerkships under the government, places which do not appeal to white men of ability for the simple reason that the white man can do better. The consequence is that the most capable of the negroes compete with whites of at best only mediocre ability.^[7] 

Racial discrimination in the South steered many African Americans away from clerk positions in Post Offices and towards letter carrier positions.  In 1905 the secretary of the Civil Service Commission’s Atlanta District stated that because African Americans in his district knew that accepting Post Office clerkships “means trouble for them” they “really prefer to act as carriers – a position in which their services are welcomed by white Southerners.”^[8]  Booker T. Washington remarked in 1906:

In many parts of the South the white people would object seriously to colored people handing them a letter through the post office window, but would make no objection to a colored mail carrier handing them a letter at their door.^[9]

Although Roosevelt was sympathetic to civil rights, by his own admission he appointed fewer African Americans to office than his predecessor, and he took no action to protect civil rights.^[10]  He began to lose the faith of some civil rights supporters when he appointed racist “lily white” Republican candidates to office when it was politically expedient to do so.^[11]  Civil rights supporters were further discouraged by the Brownsville Affair in 1906, when Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 black troops, without a trial, on the basis of unsubstantiated testimony from prejudiced white residents of Brownsville, Texas.^[12]

In 1908 William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s choice for successor, was elected President.  From the start, Taft adopted a conciliatory tone with the South, stating, on the question of federal appointments, “it is not the disposition or within the province of the Federal Government to interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs,” and that appointing African Americans to federal offices in prejudiced southern communities would do more harm than good.^[13]  According to Historian Louis Harlan, Taft appointed no new black postmasters in the South and refused to reappoint incumbents as their four-year terms expired.^[14]

Although the number of black postmasters fell, the number of black postal employees continued to grow.  According to the African-American newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier, in 1912 there were nearly 4,000 black postal employees nationwide, including about 280 black postmasters, 505 employees in Chicago, 417 in New York, and 173 in St. Louis.^[15]

Wilson Administration Segregates Federal Workers

For the first time in history, a President . . . pronounced his administration’s policy as one of racial discrimination. William Monroe Trotter, 1914^[16]

In the federal elections of 1912 Democrats retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives and took control of both the White House and the Senate.  Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the Presidential election largely because two Republican candidates ran for office that year, splitting the Republican vote.

At the time, the Democratic Party was largely a party of Southern social conservatives.^[17]  Even before the Democrats took office, a group calling itself the National Democratic Fair Play Association as well as some federal workers began calling for racial segregation in the workplace.^[18]

In April 1913, in one of Wilson’s first cabinet meetings, newly-appointed Postmaster General Albert Burleson, from Texas, reportedly complained about integrated working conditions in the Railway Mail Service, where black and white railway mail clerks worked elbow to elbow sorting mail in cramped rail cars.  The Railway Mail Association, the mostly-white union of railway mail clerks, adopted the following resolution at its annual convention the next month:

Whereas, It has been demonstrated that it is to the advantage of all concerned that the negro clerks be given separate assignments from those of the Caucasian race . . . therefore be it Resolved, That this convention deems it advisable for the two races to be separated and the immediate steps be taken to that end.^[19]

Most black railway mail clerks worked in the South; some white clerks wanted to eliminate all black clerks, or at least to segregate work crews if it could be done in such a way that no white clerks would be inconvenienced.^[20]  While debating the proposed racial segregation of clerks, including how it might, paradoxically, lead to the appointment and promotion of more black clerks, one white union representative attempted to calm his fellow conferees:

I think we can trust to that splendid gentleman from Texas who is the head of the Post Office Department to not in any way issue any order of reorganization that will be to the detriment of any white postal clerk.^[21] 

Although no general segregation order is known to have been issued, some Railway Mail Service officials adopted the policy of segregating work crews, reassigning some clerks to create all-white crews on some lines and all-black crews on others, apparently with the Department’s blessing.^[22]

In 1949 Thomas P. Bomar, a former letter carrier and railway mail clerk in Georgia, recalled the dark days of the Wilson era:

Before 1912 both white and colored employees believed that the segregation provisions of the State laws did not apply to Federal property and they accepted it without friction or complaint.  Negroes were given assignments and appointed on the basis of merit. Finally there came a clamor for segregation and discrimination.  Numerous locker incidents were reported, as many white employees refused the same locker or locker rooms used with Negroes.  Rules were suspended and the arbitrary transfer of Negro clerks to ‘colored lines’ became effective.^[23]

Other federal workers were also segregated, at Post Office Department headquarters and at other federal agencies.  On May 31, 1913, the seven African-American clerks at postal headquarters were screened off from their white coworkers, although none of their coworkers had requested it.  Restrooms and some work rooms at Post Office Department headquarters and in a few other agencies’ headquarters were also segregated.  The lunch room at headquarters, meanwhile, had apparently already been whites-only, and remained so.  When asked why there was no lunch room for black employees, the building superintendent bluntly explained that “as no restaurants in Washington were open to colored people, the government could not be expected to furnish one.”^[24]

African-American political leaders, many of whom had encouraged their followers to vote for Wilson, felt betrayed.  In November 1913 they sent a delegation to the White House in search of an explanation.  Wilson denied that his administration followed a policy of segregation but promised he would look into the allegations. Segregation continued unabated. One year later the delegation returned to the White House.  One member of the delegation, William Monroe Trotter, demanded an accounting, noting that “for fifty years white and colored clerks have been working together in peace and harmony.”^[25]  Trotter’s angry tone infuriated Wilson, who told Trotter that there was no discrimination in federal agencies, and that “segregation had been inaugurated to avoid friction between the races, not to injure the negro.”^[26]

National newspapers, including The Chicago Daily Tribune, took note:

Mr. Wilson put the head of the government in the position of denying the principles of the government . . . We are not ready to concede that any body of citizenship has less standing under the law than any other.  It is true, but to admit it officially is offensive.^[27] 

On May 27, 1914, the Civil Service Commission issued a new order requiring applicants for federal jobs to submit a photograph. Although the commission claimed the requirement was to prevent fraud in the application process, it enabled appointing officials to screen out black applicants.^[28]  The “rule of three,” which allowed appointing officials to select any one of the top three eligible candidates for office, was widely used to discriminate against African-American candidates. 

Once they secured an appointment, employees still faced obstacles.  Opportunities for advancement, and in some cases continued employment, were often hindered by local prejudice and biased supervisors, with some clerks being dismissed on fraudulent or questionable grounds.  Historian A. L. Glenn described the no-win situation some railway mail clerks, in particular, found themselves in:

Negro clerks in white crews had special troubles at times.  If he was an able clerk, he was often said to be ‘too smart’’ if mediocre, he was labelled indolent and indifferent.  In a large crew he often had one or two friends but had to be alert as to the others.^[29] 

The experience of black postal employees varied, depending largely on local prejudices.  John Wesley Dobbs, a clerk from 1903 to 1935 on the Atlanta to Nashville line, recalled that although he was the only black clerk in his crew he did not experience racial friction, even during his final eight years of service when he was clerk-in-charge.^[30]   

Glenn noted examples of some white supervisors “going to bat” for black coworkers:

During the Burleson administration . . . special attempts were made to segregate the personnel of mail crews on some RPO runs. . . . In a few instances the white clerks involved absolutely refused to give up their Negro clerk.  Notably, Clerk-in Charge Gene Beckham of the Atlanta, Macon & Montgomery RPO refused to permit them to take Fielder Reddick out of his crew.  It was reliably reported that the matter was handled through a Congressman and Senator. Reddick remained.  Clerk-in-Charge Spies of the Jack. & Montgomery RPO did not wish to give up Lonnie Miller, his ace Negro clerk.  Spies fought for his man and won.^[31]   

Segregation in the Railway Mail Service and black clerks’ exclusion from the railway mail clerks’ union led to the formation of the National Alliance of Postal Employees in 1913 (see "The National Alliance of Postal Employees" below).  Segregation in general and the photograph requirement for federal job applicants also helped catalyze the civil rights movement. Membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rose from less than 400 in 1912 to more than 4,000 in 1914; by 1920 the NAACP’s membership surpassed 88,000.

1920s: Relief for Railway Mail Clerks

Prior to 1923 the Railway Mail Service was the most prejudiced of all branches of the service. . . The Railway Mail Service is today a model in just dealings and promotions.  Roy O. Wilhoit, President, National Alliance of Postal Employees, 1931^[32]

In 1921, after two terms in office, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson was replaced by Republican Warren Harding.  Under Harding and successive Republican Presidents, general postal policy began to change.  The working conditions and opportunities of African-American postal employees – particularly in the Railway Mail Service – improved.  Part of the change might be attributed to the philosophical differences between the two parties – in the 1920s Republicans were still typically more socially liberal than Democrats, and more often advocated civil rights. Part of the change can also be attributed to Chicago politics. 

In the 1920s African-American politician Edward H. Wright headed a strong Republican organization in Chicago, with influence over a voting bloc that was strong enough to decide elections.  Wright convinced Illinois Congressman Martin B. Madden to intervene in the fight to elevate black postal workers.  Madden, who had previously served on the Post Office and Post Roads Committee, was at the time chairman of the influential House Appropriations Committee. In 1922 and 1923 Madden’s son-in-law, Paul Henderson, served as Second Assistant Postmaster General.^[33] 

In 1921 the Post Office Department and the Railway Mail Association agreed that the promotions of railway mail clerks would be based on seniority, rather than the old point system, which meant that senior clerks were promoted regardless of race.  A consequence of the new policy – perhaps unanticipated by the union – was that veteran black clerks who for years had been passed over began to receive promotions.  When the union objected to the promotion of an African American to clerk-in-charge in December 1922, Second Assistant Postmaster General Paul Henderson defended the promotion, saying the employee was both qualified and entitled to it and that if necessary he would “call upon the U.S. Army to protect him in it.”^[34]  In 1922 Henderson also directed superintendents of the Railway Mail Service to appoint black clerks on certain railway lines where they had been excluded during the Wilson era – for example, on the busy lines between New York and Philadelphia. 

In 1923 African-American John D. Gainey was appointed Assistant Chief Clerk-at-Large of the Railway Mail Service, specifically to handle grievances of black employees.  The National Alliance of Postal Employees saw Gainey’s appointment as a “turning point in the ‘cleaning out’ of foul practices.”^[35]  Gainey toured the country, investigating complaints and issuing recommendations. He ended the removals of clerks on questionable charges – according to Historian A. L. Glenn, emancipating “hundreds of Negro railway postal clerks EVERYWHERE . . . even in the deep south.” ^[36]  (In 1923 about 13 percent of railway mail clerks were African-American, serving mostly in the South.^[37]) 

Glenn cites several examples of wrongs righted in the early 1920s through the intercession of Gainey and Henderson, including the reinstatement of Henry T. Ellington, a black railway mail clerk in Alabama who had been fired in 1916 after being falsely accused of embezzlement.  Also, some railway mail clerks who had been arbitrarily reassigned to segregated black crews on distant runs during the Burleson years were allowed to transfer back to their original runs, closer to home. 

1920s through 1940s: Opportunities Vary by City

A city where a Negro does not have to contend for his rights in America would be a miracle city and I have as yet to hear of such a city.  Letter Carrier Raymond A.C. Young, Baltimore, Maryland, 1944^[38]       

Beginning around 1916, in what has been termed the “Great Migration,” hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the South in search of a better life in northern U.S. cities.  African Americans moved north not only to escape from discrimination in the South, but also in search of economic opportunity.  Manpower shortages caused by World War I were opening up jobs in the North, while crop failures in the South were eliminating jobs.^[39]

Northern cities swelled with new immigrants, both Southern-born blacks and foreign-born whites. Between 1910 and 1920, Philadelphia’s black population rose by 58 percent, New York’s by 64 percent, Chicago’s by 143 percent, and Detroit’s by 613 percent.  In the 1920s the black population of New York and Chicago more than doubled again, and in Detroit it more than tripled.^[40]

Post Offices were an important source of employment for urban African Americans.  By 1928 African Americans comprised nearly 20 percent of the postal workforce in Philadelphia, and nearly 24 percent in Baltimore.^[41]  The percentage of African-American employees of the Washington, D.C., Post Office grew from about 24 percent in 1925 to 35 percent by 1931.^[42] 

Harry S. New, Postmaster General from 1923 to 1929, promised that federal hiring would be color-blind, but it was not a promise he could keep.  Although the Postmaster General stated the principles, principles were put into practice – or not – by local postmasters.  Racial discrimination persisted in both the hiring and promoting of workers, even in the nation’s capital.  Although the proportion of African Americans working at the Washington, D.C., Post Office in 1928 was on a par with their representation in the general population, they were over-represented in lower-level positions, with about 85 percent working as laborers and watchmen, and only about 15 percent in the higher-paying clerical force. 

In 1930 in Chicago, African Americans comprised about 70 percent of the Post Office laborers, 28 percent of the clerks, and 16 percent of the letter carriers, but only 5 percent of the foremen.  Southern Post Offices, meanwhile, had a worse record of discrimination.  In the mid-1930s, 80 percent of the letter carriers in Memphis and 75 percent of the letter carriers in Houston were black, but there were no black postal clerks in either city.  Some southern Post Offices passed over black applicants entirely. 

One commentator noted the tendency of local prejudices to crystallize into policy:

If a policy of a particular post office is to bar Negroes from clerkships and make them carriers, then that policy is adhered to religiously.  If it applies to Money Order, Stamp, and General Delivery windows, it likewise becomes a rule.^[43]

Employees were sometimes not only assigned to different types of work depending on their race, but also to different rooms, or different sections of the same room.  As late as 1949 the New Orleans Post Office maintained segregated “swing rooms,” or break rooms for employees; as late as 1955 many Post Offices in Alabama, including those in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile, maintained segregated swing rooms and toilets.

In the 1940s a string of executive orders battled racial discrimination in the federal workplace:

• In November 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order # 8587, eliminating the photograph requirement for civil service applicants. 
• In 1941 Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, reaffirming “the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in … government because of race. . .”^[44]  The order also created the Fair Employment Practice Committee to investigate complaints of discrimination, redress valid grievances, and advise government agencies on how best to comply with the order.  The committee chairman and its members served without compensation.
• In 1943 Executive Order 9346 again reaffirmed “the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of any person … in Government by reason of race . . .”^[45]  This order reinvented the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), giving the committee more teeth and its chairman an annual salary.
• In 1946, with Executive Order 9808, President Harry S. Truman created the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, to investigate the protection of civil rights by federal, state, and local governments, and to issue a written report with recommendations on how to strengthen the civil rights of all Americans.  The committee issued its report, “To Secure These Rights,” on October 29, 1947.^[46]
• In 1948, in Executive Order # 9980, Truman reiterated that “all personnel actions taken by Federal appointing officials . . . be based solely on merit and fitness,” and ordered that the head of each government department was “personally responsible for an effective program to insure that fair employment policies are fully observed,” directing each to appoint a Fair Employment Officer to help carry out such policies, under the “immediate supervision of the department head.”^[47]  Decisions of the Fair Employment Officer could be appealed to the department head, whose decisions, in turn, could be appealed to a newly-created Fair Employment Board in the Civil Service Commission.^[48]

Patriotic propaganda during World War II called for all Americans to unite to fight at home and abroad for the American ideals of freedom and democracy, but domestically, African Americans were often treated like second-class citizens.  Some Post Office break rooms and restrooms in the South were still whites-only, and nationwide, white postal employees were often given preferred work assignments.  In Saint Louis, a black employee was arrested in 1941 following an altercation that arose after the clerk refused to move to the rear of the Post Office’s cafeteria to drink his cup of coffee.^[49]  In 1944 a postal employee in Baltimore noted that “south of Washington, D.C., to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single Negro supervisor or window clerk serving any of the post offices.”^[50]  Even in cities like Chicago, where blacks were politically powerful, less than 3 percent of postal supervisors were black. 

In 1943 Postmaster General Frank C. Walker published “A Message to All Postal Personnel” in the Postal Bulletin, which was issued to Post Offices nationwide. Walker stated that “discrimination is repugnant to all our principles of good government and decency,” and instructed employees that:

every postal worker should have full opportunity of aspiring to and reaching positions to which is talents, his energy, and his integrity entitle him. . . It is the duty of each postmaster and each superintendent to see to it that his office is so conducted that it cannot be charged justly than any person whomsoever under his jurisdiction has not received the promotions, the assignments, or other benefits that are due him.^[51]

Some postmasters took their duty seriously. Just 24 hours after he was confirmed as postmaster of Los Angeles in 1946, Michael Fanning appointed four new African-American supervisors in the Los Angeles Post Office, where about one-third of the workforce was African-American.  Speaking at a convention of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, Fanning later declared:

I state unequivocally that I don’t know of a post office in the United States, including our own, where there is not some degree of race discrimination. . . Our legislators in Washington have provided the laws that are necessary to guarantee full freedom and race equality in the post office.  Whether or not such freedom and equality is obtained, however, will be decided by the human element in the post offices.^[52] 

In 1947 Senator William Langer, chairman of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, ordered an investigation of allegations of racial discrimination in the hiring and promotion of employees at seven southern Post Offices.  His special investigator found that African Americans – including honorably discharged veterans – were systematically denied appointments, promotions, and preferred assignments in Post Offices due solely to their race.^[53] 

African Americans also suffered disproportionately during the employee loyalty investigations that followed Truman’s Executive Order 9835 of March 22, 1947.  Ashby Carter, president of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, noted that “the majority of dismissals under the loyalty act were aimed at getting rid of Negro postal employees who spoke out for democracy within the post office system”.^[54] 

Despite the hardships faced by applicants and employees, postal jobs were coveted positions.  Although African Americans did not find equal opportunity in postal work – they were rarely promoted to supervisory positions, for example – they at least found opportunity, in an era when little was available in the private sector.  In a 1939 survey of African-American adolescent boys in New York City, “Post Office clerk” topped the list of preferred jobs; “mail carrier” was number six on the 22-item list.^[55]  Many black postal employees were college students or graduates; some had law degrees but worked at the Post Office because white law firms would not hire them. One former postal worker recalled that in 1941 he sorted mail in Detroit with an African American who had his own law practice. The employee recalled that his coworker “would show up in court on days and come to the post office and work nights,” adding “that was pretty common.”^[56]  A study of African Americans in Chicago in the 1930s noted that:

In the [Chicago] post office one will find not only colored high school graduates, but also men with advanced college degrees seeking economic security and students studying medicine and law.  In 1939, at least a half-dozen Negro postal employees were writing books!  The “postal worker” is a social type . . . of definitely high status.^[57]

Richard Wright, award-winning author of Native Son and Black Boy, worked as a clerk at the Chicago Post Office sporadically from 1928 through the mid-1930s, before leaving to pursue a writing career in New York City.^[58]

Civil Rights Pioneers

Many African-American postal workers were civil rights activists; some were also prominent leaders.  Herbert Hill, national labor director of the NAACP from 1951 to 1977, recalled that whenever he visited towns looking for volunteers to lead civil rights activities, “there would be the minister, the undertaker, the lawyer and the post office worker.” (Washington Post, March 14, 1974)

John L. LeFlore, a letter carrier in Mobile, Alabama, from 1922 to 1965, reorganized the Mobile branch of the NAACP in 1926 and served as its executive secretary until the NAACP was banned in Alabama in 1956.  He helped reorganize NAACP branches in other cities and helped establish the Regional Conference of Southern Branches, serving as its chairman from 1936 to 1945. From 1956 until his death in 1976 LeFlore worked for civil rights under the auspices of the Non-Partisan Voters League. He fought for the desegregation of Mobile’s public schools and businesses, worked to register and inform black voters and improve housing, and helped many African Americans find jobs. He wrote for The Chicago Defender from 1942 to 1952 and later was associate editor of the Mobile Beacon.  In 1958 LeFlore helped mount a legal appeal of the rape conviction of Willie Seals by an all-white jury, on the basis that blacks had been excluded from both the grand jury and the trial jury.  The appeal was ultimately successful and helped lead to the integration of juries in the South.  Although in 1956 LeFlore was suspended without pay for 28 days and threatened with removal due to “irregularities” in his job performance, he kept his postal position until he resigned in 1965. 

Westley W. Law, a letter carrier in Savannah, Georgia, from about 1948 to the early 1990s, was president of that city’s branch of the NAACP from 1950 to 1976.  Like LeFlore, Law spearheaded the civil rights movement in his city.  He worked for the desegregation of public schools, worked for voting rights, and helped lead a 15-month boycott of segregated stores which ended in July 1961 when the stores desegregated their lunch counters. In September 1961 Law was fired from his letter carrier position following the election of a local U.S. Congressman who had made his firing a campaign promise.  Law was reinstated the next month at the direction of President John F. Kennedy; he continued delivering mail in Savannah until he retired in the early 1990s.

Heman Marion Sweatt, a letter carrier in Houston, Texas, from about 1938 to 1947, participated in voter-registration drives in Houston, wrote for the black newspaper The Houston Informer, and served as the local secretary of the National Alliance of Postal Employees.  Sweatt is most well known as the successful plaintiff in the 1950 U.S. Supreme Court case Sweatt v. Painter, the pre-cursor to Brown v. Board of Education.  (See Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall and the Long Road To Justice, by Gary M. Lavergne.)

More activist postal workers are described in There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality, by Philip F. Rubio.

1950s: A New Era

Any man who seeks to deny equality among all his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites the mockery of the tyrant.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, 1953^[59]

In the 1950s some of the seeds planted in the late 1940s began to bear fruit.  African-American postal employees, meanwhile, did not wait passively for their rights to be handed to them.  Many employees fought hard for their right to fair and equal treatment – not only in the workplace, but in communities at large.  Several postal employees became prominent civil rights leaders, working with groups like the NAACP and the National Alliance of Postal Employees (see “Civil Rights Pioneers,” below). 

After receiving complaints from a committee of the National Alliance of Postal Employees in the early 1950s, the new postmaster of Fort Worth, Texas, eliminated the “whites only” restrooms, swing rooms, and drinking fountains at the Post Office, telling the committee that “all employees within the post office were at liberty to use any and all facilities.”^[60]

In 1952, John LeFlore, a longtime letter carrier in Mobile, Alabama, and secretary of that city’s branch of the NAACP, noted that segregation continued in the Mobile Post Office at the direction of Post Office officials, not because the workers desired it. LeFlore explained: 

White and Negro letter carriers have work desks indiscriminately placed and go about their duties in the post office as members of one big family . . . The men are congenial, they joke with one another, salute each other with a "hello, Frank," or a similar expression . . . and get along as human beings should . . .

All employees drink from the same water fountain.  There are segregated restrooms and toilets not because the men asked for them, but because the officials, perhaps behind time with antiquated ideas about the place of race in a progressive atmosphere of democracy, don't have sufficient vision to see the folly of segregation.^[61]

In 1953 LeFlore wrote to Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, appealing to him to order an end to the practice of segregating restrooms and toilets in Post Offices, which was “widespread in the South with few exceptions.”^[62]  While Summerfield apparently issued no such order, he helped level the playing field for black workers in other ways.  In 1953 he introduced qualifying examinations for promotions to supervisory positions in Post Offices, which the National Alliance of Postal Employees had long advocated.  Henry W. McGee, who became Chicago’s first black postmaster in 1966, noted that “under this system the number of Negro supervisors . . . increased tremendously.”^[63]  The percentage of African Americans in supervisory positions at some Post Offices more than doubled in the 1950s (see chart and data set below).  In Chicago, the number of black supervisors more than tripled, from 41 to 129.

African Americans began serving as window clerks at the Louisville, Kentucky, Post Office and at a number of northern Post Offices by 1954.  William C. Jason, the National Welfare Director of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, noted that: 

In the north, merit, fitness and seniority have actually become color blind in a number of the larger post offices.  Bigoted officials who said the public would not stand for a Negro window clerk have learned better.^[64]

In November 1954 African American Joseph A. Clarke was appointed as a staff assistant to First Assistant Postmaster General Norman Abrams, to help promote equal employment opportunity in the Post Office Department.  Clarke, a former newspaper publisher, had previously worked for the State of New Jersey’s Urban Colored Population Commission, which investigated racial discrimination and suggested remedies.  On the heels of Clarke’s appointment the National Alliance of Postal Employees rejoiced:  

At present all postmasters—especially the larger offices where many Negroes are employed—are PERSONALLY informed, when necessary, of the NEW attitude towards ALL employees regardless of race.^[65]

In January 1955 President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10590, creating the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy, to help ensure that equal employment opportunity was available to all regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin.  The new committee superseded the Fair Employment Board created by executive order in 1948.  On February 24, 1955, Postmaster General Summerfield published in the Postal Bulletin procedures to be followed by complainants (both applicants and employees), supervisors, and officers in handling complaints of discrimination.  If complainants were dissatisfied with the results of the investigation at the Department level they could appeal their case to the President’s Committee on Government Employment Policy.  Groups, as well as individuals, could file complaints.  The National Alliance of Postal Employees called the policy a “crowning masterpiece” and considered that “the postal service—the humane part of it—has just about reached its zenith.”^[66]

In March 1955 Mr. Leslie Liburd, president of the New York City branch of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, was appointed Assistant Regional Personnel Manager in the Post Office Department.  Clarke administered his oath of office, stating that “from here on, there will be no ceiling on ambition . . . in the Postal Service, whether in New York or in Alabama.”^[67]  He later pointed out that adhering to the spirit of President Eisenhower’s executive order made not only ethical and political sense, but economic sense.  He gave as an example a Post Office station where “Negro employees . . . had to travel across the entire building” to use a segregated restroom – integrating restrooms and having all employees use the closest facilities saved “100 man hours per day for the entire station.”^[68] 

In December 1956 anti-job discrimination posters were carried on the sides of more than 25,000 mail trucks.  When a racist postmaster in North Carolina refused to hire an eligible black applicant, Postmaster General Summerfield called the postmaster and threatened to fire him if he did not change his mind – the applicant was offered a job the next day.

In 1958 Herbert Hill, the labor secretary of the NAACP, simultaneously praised the Post Office Department and chastised other federal agencies when he noted that the Post Office Department was the only federal agency in the South that employed African Americans “above the level of janitor and other menial classifications.”^[69] 

On November, 19, 1960, Frayser Lane of the Urban League noted:

Because of the pay and security, the P.O. is the basic foundation for the Negro community . . . P.O. workers have bought more homes and sent more offspring to college than any other segment of our group.^[70]

1960s: Advancement

I’d say we’ve got some catching up to be done and should do it. Postmaster General J. Edward Day, 1961^[71]

Although in 1960 the Post Office Department was the largest single employer of African Americans in the country, most African-American employees toiled in lower-level positions with little hope for advancement.

In 1961 newly-elected President John F. Kennedy and J. Edward Day, Kennedy’s choice for Postmaster General, embarked on an ambitious program to create equal opportunity in the workplace.  On March 6, 1961, Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, stating that:

It is the plain and positive obligation of the United States Government to promote and ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, without regard to race,

and acknowledging that the government had often failed to do this in the past.^[72]  That same month Deputy Postmaster General William Brawley, meeting with the directors of the 15 postal regions, cited the underrepresentation of African Americans in the supervisory ranks as evidence of past discrimination. 

That summer the Department selected 15 Special Assistants for Employee Relations, one for each regional office, to assure full-time attention to civil rights and employee-management relations.  It published a “no discrimination policy” in the May 25, 1961, issue of the Postal Bulletin and issued a new “Code of Ethics for Postal Employees” on August 10, 1961.  On December 12, 1961, Equal Employment Opportunity posters were issued for display in all Post Offices, and on January 12, 1962, posters were placed on all bulletin boards outlining how to file complaints of discrimination.

Meanwhile, several African Americans were appointed to high-profile positions:

• In 1961 Christopher C. Scott, a 38-year postal veteran from Los Angeles, was appointed as a deputy to the Assistant Postmaster General for Transportation, making him the highest-ranking African American in the Post Office Department to that date, with an annual salary of $18,500.
• In 1961 Day appointed Henry McGee as regional personnel director for the Chicago Region, the highest position ever held by an African American in the Postal Field Service. 
• In 1961 Day appointed Mrs. Nancy C. Avery as acting postmaster of the Pacoima, California, Post Office – reportedly the first African American to head a first-class Post Office since the Reconstruction era.^[73]  Avery was appointed to the position permanently in 1963 and served until her retirement in 1984.
• In 1962 Charles A. Preston, a postal clerk and college graduate from Fort Wayne, Indiana, was appointed as a postal inspector in the Inspection Service’s Philadelphia Division.  Preston was the first African American appointed as a postal inspector since the 1800s.   

Between 1962 and 1964, the percentage of supervisor jobs held by African Americans rose from 5 to 10.  Between 1961 and 1968, the percentage of top-earners in the Post Office Department who were African-American rose from less than one to roughly four percent.^[80]  In the same period, the overall representation of African Americans in the postal workforce increased from about 15 to about 20 percent.

In 1966 African-American postmasters headed the nation’s three-largest Post Offices – New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles (see sidebar at right).  Together, these offices handled about 14 percent of the nation’s mail volume, with 11 percent of its employees. Chicago postmaster Henry McGee noted in 1967 that

“In my 38 years of postal service I have seen conditions change from almost complete segregation to the present time where opportunities for minority advancement is limited only to ability and drive.”^[81]

On April 29, 1969, Ronald B. Lee – formerly the head of the Post Office Department’s planning and systems analysis office – became the first African-American Assistant Postmaster General when he was appointed Assistant Postmaster General of Planning and Marketing by President Richard M. Nixon. 

As the 1960s progressed, African Americans benefited from increased job opportunities, both in the private and public sectors. The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned job discrimination by private employers; postal salaries, meanwhile, stagnated.  As the Department began to face stiff competition for educated workers, the demographics of new employees shifted – less highly educated workers, and more women, began entering the postal workforce. 

In 1966 Henry McGee, then personnel director of the Chicago Region, said “postal jobs go begging because the post office can’t compete with pay scales in private industry,” citing a starting wage of $3.13 an hour for city transportation workers, versus $2.64 at the Post Office.^[82]  Seventy percent of newly-hired employees in Chicago that year were women, because men could find better paying jobs elsewhere.^[83] 

In 1967 an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Division was created within the Bureau of Personnel, and Postmaster General O’Brien boasted that the Post Office Department was “the leading employer of Negroes in 12 major cities.”^[84]  In some cities, like Detroit, Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles, African Americans comprised 70 to 80 percent of postal employees.  A writer for the black-interest newspaper the Chicago Daily Defender, however, noted that the Post Office Department had little choice but to hire African Americans:   

the tight manpower market and the undesirable working conditions . . . have forced the employment of large numbers of Negroes.  The facts indicate there just is not anyone else available for the Post Office Department to hire.^[85]

As the decade came to a close, Congress voted for steep pay increases for postal workers – 6 percent in 1967, 5 percent in 1968, 4.7 percent in 1969, and a total of 14 percent in 1970.  Meanwhile, logjams of mail at outdated postal facilities, as well as deepening postal deficits, convinced Congress to reorganize the nation’s postal system.  In 1970, Congress passed the Postal Reorganization Act, transforming the United States Post Office Department into the self-funding, quasi-independent United States Postal Service. 

From Postal Reorganization to the End of the Century

After the United States Postal Service was created from the Post Office Department, African Americans were increasingly promoted to managerial positions.  On July 23, 1971, just 22 days after the United States Postal Service officially began operations, Ronald B. Lee was promoted to Assistant Postmaster General for Customer Development.^[86]  In October 1971 Alvin J. Prejean, former deputy executive director of the Chicago Urban League, was named director of the Office of Social Priorities, in charge of administering equal job opportunity programs.  At the same time, Joseph N. Cooper was promoted to advertising manager in Communications and Public Affairs.  Cooper had worked in advertising in New York City, was executive director of the New York Museum of Black History and Culture, and had hosted a weekly television show which focused on black achievements.  By 1979, 4.5 percent of top postal executives were African-American.

But even while African Americans were making inroads into postal management, racial discrimination persisted in some postal facilities.  In 1973 Napoleon Chisholm, a black employee in Charlotte, North Carolina, filed a class action lawsuit against the Postal Service, alleging that it denied him the opportunity to compete for promotions and also that it discriminated against black workers generally. The federal district court decided the case in his favor, and the court’s decision was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals in 1981.^[87]  The Postal Service was ordered to award back pay to employees who could demonstrate entitlement, to make “affirmative efforts” to recruit and appoint African Americans and to promote black employees in proportion to their overall employment rate, to establish objective criteria for promotions, details, and discipline, to use only validated written tests or new selection devices, and to create a new position – that of EEO Employee Complaints Representative. 

Chisholm v. United States Postal Service illuminated the unequal treatment received by black employees at the Charlotte Post Office: not only was the promotional system discriminatory, from skewed written tests, to all-white promotion advisory boards that favored white applicants, and uneven application of procedures to benefit whites, but blacks were disciplined for offenses for which whites were not punished.  Although blacks comprised only 30 percent of the workforce in Charlotte in the 1970s, they comprised more than 50 percent of workers suspended, and were terminated at twice the rate of white employees.^[88] 

A series of studies in the 1980s highlighted both the Postal Service’s strengths and weaknesses as an employer.  A 1984 study found that the Postal Service was a leader in equal pay for equal work, that:

the Postal Service paid its employees internally comparable wages, regardless of their gender or race, whereas in most other industries wages differed significantly by gender or by race, or by both.^[89]

A study by the New York firm Clark, Phipps and Harris, Inc., in 1983, however, found that minorities were promoted less often, and disciplined more often, than white postal workers.  Another study – of newly-hired postal employees in the Boston area in the late 1980s – found that blacks were slightly more than twice as likely as to be fired as whites, even controlling for factors like gender, age, drug use, absenteeism, test scores, accidents, and disciplinary infractions.^[90] 

In the 1980s African-American postal employees formed two national networking and mentoring organizations to foster the career development of black employees.  Network, an organization focused on mentoring African-American women managers and supervisors, first met informally in Chicago in 1984 and elected its first national board of directors in 1987.  That same year a group of black postal managers and executives, perceiving a weakening commitment to affirmative action programs and a decreasing number of black executives in the Postal Service, formed the group Afro-American Postal League United for Success (A-PLUS), open to EAS employees and PCES executives.^[91]

The final decades of the 20th century saw more African-American postal “firsts.”  In January 1981 Mary A. Brown was appointed as the first black woman MSC Manager/Postmaster – at Shreveport, Louisiana.^[92]  Mary J. Layton became the first black woman Assistant Postmaster General when she was appointed Assistant Postmaster General of the Public and Employee Communications Department in 1982. 

The first African-American employee to attain the position of Regional Postmaster General was Emmett E. Cooper Jr., who was named the Eastern Regional Postmaster General in 1977.  Johnnie F. Thomas was appointed Eastern Regional Postmaster General in March 1986, and in March 1989 Samuel Green Jr. became the third African-American to hold the position of Eastern Regional Postmaster General. 

In 1992 the title “Vice President” replaced “Assistant Postmaster General.”  In the 1990s the following African Americans served as Vice Presidents of the United States Postal Service (listed with their most recent title):

Sylvester Black	Vice President, Western Area Operations
Samuel Green Jr.	Senior Vice President, Customer Sales and Services
Robert F. Harris	Vice President, Diversity Development
Clarence E. Lewis Jr.	Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President
Henry A. Pankey	Vice President, Mid-Atlantic Area Operations

Clarence E. Lewis Jr. was named Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President in June 2, 1998 – the highest-ranking African-American postal employee to that date.  Lewis started his postal career as a substitute city letter carrier in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1966.  He advanced through supervisory and management positions in Norfolk and in 1986 became an executive in the Richmond Division. He received several promotions before his appointment as Vice President, Area Operations, Allegheny Area, in 1996, and as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President in 1998.  In March 2000 Postmaster General Bill Henderson gave Lewis the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Postal Service’s highest honor.

Building upon its affirmative action and EEO programs, in 1992 the Postal Service created a Diversity Development department to “serve as the Postal Service’s social conscience.”^[93]  The goals of the department were to “increase employees’ awareness of and appreciation for ethnic and cultural diversity” and to:

ensure that all career and succession planning takes advancement for women and minorities into consideration, and that the cultural makeup of local communities is represented in the postal work force.^[94]

In February 1997 an African-American manager at Postal Service headquarters remarked that although progress had been made in equal employment opportunity, the Postal Service still had “pockets of discrimination and a lack of commitment to equal promotional opportunities.”^[95]  That May, the chairman of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors, Tirso del Junco, announced that Aguirre International had been awarded a contract to conduct an independent study of the Postal Service’s diversity policies and practices as they related to hiring, promotion, training and contracting.^[96]  The Aguirre team found that minorities were well represented in the postal workforce at large, although they were underrepresented at the higher levels.   Aguirre’s report, issued in January 1998, concluded that the United States Postal Service stood out as a leader in meeting affirmative action goals and striving for a diverse workforce.  

At the end of the 20th century African Americans constituted roughly 21 percent of the postal workforce, versus 11 percent of the civilian labor force.  At the same time, they filled about 14 percent of top postal management positions.^[97] 

In 2000, Fortune magazine ranked the United States Postal Service 9th on its list of “America’s 50 Best Companies for Minorities.”^[98]  

HISTORIAN
UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE
FEBRUARY 2012

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