Portside

Over the following three and a half decades, she held various human resources leadership roles in the Navy before joining the Energy Department.

Smith also helped dozens of aspiring Black professionals find government jobs, including her husband, Jesse, an Army veteran. Over a 26-year-career in the Navy, he rose from a meat cutter in the commissary to an ammunition assistant and he eventually retired as a machinist.

"We were able to buy a house, raise five kids, send three of them to college and live a very comfortable life,” said Denise Smith, 73, and now retired, noting that she worked under seven different presidential administrations. "The federal civil service gave us opportunities to live out our American Dream."

Government jobs have long been viewed as an entry point for Black Americans into the middle class and job security when opportunities were scarce elsewhere.

As the nation’s largest single employer, with about 3 million workers at the end of 2024, the federal government has a history of being more welcoming to Black workers than the private sector has, civil rights leaders say.

So President Donald Trump's massive layoffs across the U.S. government have hit Black Americans particularly hard.

"I absolutely think that the attacks on federal workers will have an acute and disproportionate impact on Black federal workers and that's because the federal government is highly diverse," said Jennifer Holmes, deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Federal jobs helped build Black middle class

Trump and Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, say the government is bloated and wasteful, and must be purged of tens of thousands of workers.

Black Americans, who account for about 12% of the population, make up about 13% of workers in the nongovernment workforce, but they make up roughly 19% of the federal government employees, labor statistics show.

The rise of the Black federal workforce helped build a Black middle class in America after generations of segregation, prejudice and worse, said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told USA TODAY.

"It began with the Postal Service and the military, and their roles have expanded," Morial said. "In the last 40 to 50 years, we have made great progress and advanced through the ranks of these civil service positions with pride and distinction, and the nation has benefitted from it."

As a result, sturdy middle-class Black communities sprouted up in major metropolises, Morial said, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington with its surrounding suburbs in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Because of the federal workforce, Washington is consistently among the highest median incomes for Black households for any city nationally, Morial added.

A study by the University of California at Berkeley's Labor Center, for instance, found Black workers in the public sector earned roughly 25% more than their private sector counterparts.

Janice Lee, 65, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Transportation after 18 years, said she gained a more stable foothold through her public service, which included a stint working on Capitol Hill and in the Education Department.

“My father gained his federal employment beginning as a busboy,” she said. “Now I see our country crumbling.”

Lee said that although the president’s supporters want to believe federal workers are lazy, federal workers provide critical and professional functions for the country.

"What (Trump) needs to know is most Black people were promoted on merit,” she said. “So the way I see it, this is a way to defund Black people as a whole because I will tell you upward middle-class living was provided through the opportunities that we received through promotions in the federal government."

Federal government hired Blacks pre-Civil Rights era

Historically, the federal government had more progressive hiring and retention practices than private enterprises even amid the rising tide of racial segregation in the late 19th Century, as a massive influx of Black workers flocked into Washington, D.C., after emancipation.

But historians note much of that began to change after the 1912 presidential election, when Woodrow Wilson imposed strict segregation rules in federal workplaces that relegated Black workers to more menial jobs.

Civil rights activists say they cannot overlook today’s parallels given several of Trump's actions since returning to power, such as ending diversity and equity programs and rescinding a landmark 1965 executive order prohibiting discriminatory employment practices for government contractors.

The president recently signed an executive order dismantling several federal agencies focused on libraries, museums and ending homelessness. Tucked away in the list of government entities the decree deemed "unnecessary" was the Minority Business Development Agency, which promoted growth of minority-owned businesses. 

Holmes, the NAACP legal defense fund attorney, said that as civil rights groups consider various legal challenges against Trump’s mass layoffs, there are other troubling areas, such as possibly privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, which could have a disproportionate impact on Black federal workers.

“Black people helped build this country into a great powerhouse through their civil service, through their military service and their hard work, talent and expertise across all agencies," she said. "So to push them and others out of government will be just a devastating loss."

No clear data is available on how Trump's cuts have impacted Black workers specifically as of yet, but during an online meeting with NAACP Legal Defense Fund members and others earlier this year, the group said many of the departments targeted by the administration have the highest percentage of Black employees.

As of January 2023, the civil rights organization said in a presentation provided to USA TODAY, about 36% of the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments, 33% of the Small Business Administration, and 29% of the Social Security Administration and Treasury Department were Black.

'I'm far from finished': Black federal workers say they will persevere

USA TODAY reached out to a dozen Black federal employees, but nearly all declined to talk on the record, fearing for their jobs.

Quay Crowner no longer has one to lose.

After more than 30 years, last week was her last as a federal employee, after mass layoffs swept through the Education Department.

Crowner, the eldest daughter of Denise and Jesse Smith, spent almost 11 years in supervisory positions within the department: human resources director, chief administration officer, and most recently, outreach and engagement director in the Federal Student Aid office, which handles student loans and financial aid disbursement.

Crowner said her mission throughout has been to help students and their parents find money to attend college or trade school. She said her division provides an estimated $120 billion in federal grants, loans, and work-study funding to more than 15 million students from all backgrounds, whether they live in Philadelphia or Paducah, Kentucky. She’s taken to social media to tell them the dream of attending college is possible and why filling out a FAFSA form is so important.

"Contrary to popular belief, we operate more like a financial organization than an educational one,” said Crowner, 55, a married mother with a daughter in college. "No student should be denied the opportunity to get an education. It’s our job to make sure they do."

However, Crowner’s professional life has been tumultuous these past two months. With threats of the Trump administration dismantling her department, Crowner was put on administrative leave. 

“I’m not choosing to leave or retire. My departure has been chosen for me,” she said.

Crowner said the family lineage of federal government workers will likely stop with her. Her own daughter plans to attend law school. “She has a different vision of public service.”

Still, Crowner said, she's not done helping her country or her community.

“I’m far from finished; I have more work to do,” she said. “And it will include public service, somewhere.”