How Black retirees utilized the federal civil service as a pathway to the middle class

WASHINGTON – Evelyn Seabrook was able to buy a home even though she had only a high school diploma. Glenn Flood worked his way up the career ladder to become a public affairs officer for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And Calvin Stevens had a dual military and federal service career that took him to high levels in both.

Now in their late 70s and early 80s, the three retirees are part of a generation of Black Americans who used the military and federal civil service to pursue the American dream. They acknowledge there were challenges. But they believe they received more opportunities in the military and as government employees than they would have in a private sector where racial discrimination and patronage were common at the time they were ready to enter the workforce.

“I am glad I chose to be in federal service,” Seabrook said. “Even with all the drawbacks, my personal life was enhanced by my federal job.”

Seabrook, Flood and Stevens have more than 120 years of combined military and federal service. As leaders in various capacities in the National Active and Retired Employees Association, they are plugged into the siege federal employees are under during the opening weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term. It started with the elimination of programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and has expanded to a culling of the federal workforce under Elon Musk, a special adviser to the Republican president. Musk also seeks to eliminate agencies as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

They say one thing being lost in the attacks on the federal workforce is its important history as a stepping stone into the middle class for minorities when paths were limited, in particular for Black Americans.

Speaking from their homes near Orlando, Florida, and in Decatur, Georgia, and Palm Springs, California, the retirees said when they came into the military and federal service decades ago, the push wasn’t about diversifying the workforce. Rather, the opportunities were about ending the discrimination that left qualified people of color on the outside of many workplaces.

Then-President Lyndon Johnson addressed the problem of employment discrimination through law and executive order. That opened the door wider to the U.S. Postal Service, the military and many other federal jobs where Black professionals got their first chance to pursue executive-level jobs, said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.

“The progress in federal civilian employment was far faster and far greater than it was in the private sector,” which was “far slower to create the opportunity to run nondiscriminatory hiring practices,” he said.

The result was a rise in the Black middle class, especially in places like Washington, D.C., where workers entered the system in lower-level jobs but rose through the ranks based on performance, he said.

“At one point, DC had the highest median income for African Americans in any city in the country,” Morial said.

For now, the federal government is the largest single employer in the U.S. with about 3 million workers, which includes 600,000 with the U.S. Postal Service but not the active duty military. While Black Americans are nearly 14% of the population overall, they make up nearly 19% of the federal workforce.

Proud of being hired and promoted on merit

Seabrook, 80, began her Social Security Administration career in New York City in 1966 and worked for the federal government for more than 39 years.

The irony of hearing and seeing DEI used as a signal for unworthiness is that there was no affirmative action or special programs to recruit people like her when she started working.

“The only initiatives I have seen was if you were a veteran” and points were added to your test score, she said from her home in Florida. “In terms of ethnicity, culture, race, that wasn’t even part of the picture. We weren’t thinking about it then.”

Even the full impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came years after she started working. She took tests and those scores led to interviews. Preferences weren’t “part of my life or how I got promoted or not. I got promoted because I could understand the work. I never went in under incentive programs.”

Her own career path was not entirely smooth and included complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Nevertheless, she continued moving up in positions and even helped train new employees.

“It certainly was very helpful in me maintaining a level of living that I probably could not have done elsewhere,” Seabrook said.

Middle-class life not something to take for granted

Flood, 78, was a Navy officer who also served in the reserves and at the Pentagon, where he was one of the regular briefers for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He said federal service was instrumental in helping people of color show their abilities.

Flood said the times now are “scary” because of the impact on the federal workforce and how departments and agencies are responding to the administration’s moves to gut them: “There’s important work out there, and not everything is in D.C,” he said from his home in the Southern California desert.

His old department, Defense, issued instructions saying it would no longer acknowledge Black History Month, Native American Heritage Month or similar commemorations of culture and history. But he said recognizing that history is important to show how far certain groups have come.

His father also was in the Navy but could serve only as a steward.

“I am very proud of my civil service and my Navy career” and its role in his “middle-class life,” Flood said. “That was not something you could take lightly.”

Saddened to see the civil service under attack

Stevens, 77, spent 31 years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves and more than three decades with the General Services Administration. He, like Flood and Seabrook, said his experience wasn’t always smooth, but that he had mentors who helped.

As his career went forward, he would take it upon himself to get whatever training he needed, paying out of his own pocket so he could advance. One goal was to serve as a role model and mentor for others, and he suggested that recruitment efforts include Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Atlanta area, where he was based and now lives. He recalls people of color coming into the service with degrees, often advanced ones.

He realizes that some might have viewed him merely as an affirmative action hire, “but I met the qualifications,” he said. “I was educated and I was trying to advance, taking classes on my own” to train and prepare for each position he sought.

Stevens said his military and federal career gave him a blessed life, and that he is saddened to see the whole system under attack.

“A lot of people went to the federal sector because that was a middle-class opportunity,” he said. “Some did have degrees and some did not, but they felt that the government, their positions, were secure. They had benefits and they feel that they had a fair opportunity for promotion.”

___

Associated Press video journalist Sharon Johnson in Atlanta contributed to this report.