The Guardian: In recent weeks, the fate of the United States Postal Service (USPS), a revered and vital public institution, has been uncertain. Since the start of his second presidency, Donald Trump has launched major changes to the federal government. Along with billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the president has carried out widespread layoffs at agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with the purported goal of cutting costs and boosting efficiency. Now, Trump is turning his focus to the post office, an agency he has long been critical of and one that he may be privatizing.
In addition to delivering upwards of 343.5m pieces of mail and packages a day, the post office is responsible for administering official government forms such as passport applications, and providing banking services, such as money orders. As of 2025, it employs 640,000 people. Black people, in particular, make up 29% of its staff, while making up just 12% of the national workforce overall….
The gains in the post office with regards to diversity aren’t accidental. One reason for the high rate of Black employment at the postal office is because the USPS recruits veterans, a large percentage of whom are Black, said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “They’re vetted and they’re trustworthy,” said Morrissey of veterans. “You don’t want somebody messing with mail. The consequences are harsh if somebody does that.”…
The wealth building relationship between Black Americans and the postal service dates back to the 19th century, says Phillip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T State University. In 1865, Congress passed a law allowing Black people to be employed as postal workers, reversing an 1802 bill that previously declared that mail carriers could only be “free white persons”. Formerly enslaved people then started “taking advantage of what was a patronage job”, said Rubio, who’s an expert on Black postal workers. “The way the postal service opens up to African Americans is [that] they open the door,” he said, adding: “The post office [was] attractive when so many private sector jobs were closed to [Black people].”
Black people who were already employed by the post office began helping other Black folks obtain jobs, including studying with them for the postal exam. In 1872, Congress revoked the Freedman’s Bureau Act, which provided labor contracts between freed Black people and landowners. With those opportunities gone, “[the postal office] becomes a means of wealth accumulation and transfer,” said Rubio, particularly for Black people in the south. “It becomes a means of higher education for them and their families, also for their children, [and] becomes an avenue to home ownership,” he said. Black people moving north during the great migration also found work at northern post offices in urban cities.