Cornelia Poku was doing work she believed in. As a marketing communications specialist at AmeriCorps Seniors, she supported a program of 140,000 volunteers serving older adults and students. A former teacher, she always wanted a career in public service. Then, in 2025, she lost the job, not once but twice.
She was first laid off in February under the executive order cutting probationary federal employees. A federal court order briefly brought her back. Then, in March, a mass reduction-in-force snatched her job again. Poku was one of the nearly 96,000 Black women who lost federal jobs last year.
For decades, government work has been one of the most reliable ladders into the Black middle class. In the late 1800s, the U.S. Postal Service was among the first government agencies to hire Black workers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 brought the protections against discrimination in public-sector jobs that private employers didn't. Black women became a large part of the federal workforce as a result.
In 1925, A. Phillip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters became the first Black labor union and helped prove that steady, dignified public work could be the anchor of Black economic life. In 2025, mass federal layoffs pulled up that anchor. In times like these, the legacy of Black mutual aid is something we must lean on, too. We're all we've got.
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