News and Views of the Postal Service: Trezzvant W. Anderson and Black Labor Journalism in the New Deal Era

Trezzvant W. Anderson (1906–63) was a railway postal clerk, labor activist, and newspaper correspondent who used crusading journalism to aid the larger struggle to end racial discrimination in the civil service. Anderson's activism led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8587, which ended the civil service employment application photograph requirements. Anderson's advocacy journalism, centered upon union action and workplace justice, illustrates how the black press embraced employment issues and made them central to African American aspirations for racial equality in the New Deal era.