John W. Curry has been credited as the first African-American letter carrier working for the United States Post Office. He was active in the National Association of Letter Carriers, and his death in 1899 was noted in its magazine, ''The Postal Record''. He was employed in the Washington, DC post office in 1867.

The Washington Bee ''The Washington Bee'' was a Washington, D.C.-based American weekly newspaper founded in 1882 and primarily read by African Americans. Throughout almost all of its forty-year history, it was edited by African American lawyer-journalist William Cal ...

in 1899 praised him as doing much "to open the way for admission of other colored carriers."The Paradoxes of Diversity: Race, Class, and Gender Relations in a Federal Bureaucracy
ProQuest; 2006, page 53

References

National Association of Letter Carriers 1899 deaths {{AfricanAmerican-stub