The Black Cabinet: The Role of Civil Rights Organizations on Institutional Development and Policy Change

This grant is co-funded by The Policy Academies.

Scholarship has exposed some of the barriers government bureaucrats of color face when trying to formulate, implement, and evaluate public policies, such as disproportionately occupying low-level administrative positions as opposed to mid- or high-level management or leadership positions. Little attention, however, has been paid to the strategies that government workers of color use to navigate these barriers. Doctoral student in political science Kaia Kirk will examine the strategies that government workers of color use to participate in the federal bureaucratic policymaking process. She will conduct a case study of The Black Cabinet, a discrete, informal group of federal workers who served as racial advisors under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration for her study.