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U.S. Postal Service is often in center of fights for democracy. For exp., the American Anti-Slavery Society launched postal campaign in 1835 to flood South with abolitionist literature. White supremacists responded by seizing & destroying mail. See 
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/abolitionist-literature-post-office
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/abolitionist-literature-post-office
Role of African Americans as mail carriers was banned by Congress in 1802, following Haitian Revolution. See racist letter by Postmaster General via historian @arothmanhistory looking to prevent information sharing & organizing by Black postal workers. https://twitter.com/arothmanhistory/status/713438913029873664?s=20
via historian @arothmanhistory looking to prevent information sharing & organizing by Black postal workers. https://twitter.com/arothmanhistory/status/713438913029873664?s=20
Historian @Stephen_A_West outlines more of the response by southern secessionists to the U.S. Postal Service. https://twitter.com/Stephen_A_West/status/1249347302281678849?s=20
In 1898, Frazier Baker (appointed by President William McKinley to serve as Lake City, SC's first Black postmaster) and his 2-yr old daughter were killed by white supremacists. No one convicted. Rest of family forced to move North in Great Migration. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/white-mob-lynches-postmaster
Read a detailed history of African Americans in the Postal Service by the USPS historian (2017), here: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/african-american-workers-19thc.pdf Includes roles of Minnie Cox (Mississippi) and William Cooper Nell (Massachusetts).
After 20 years of organizing formerly enslaved people all across the South, sending countless petitions to congress, and even suing the government for Reparations, Callie House was jailed on trumped up charges of mail fraud. https://twitter.com/LadyOfSardines/status/1249378854721818624?s=20
