BLACK/AMERICAN HISTORY (2023) Photography by Jmsbell

PHOTOGRAPHIC ART, MANIPULATED, LIGHT PAINTING


IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH HERE IN AMERICA....I AM REMEMBERING ....ZANDRA IONA FLEMISTER....THE FIRST FEMALE AFRO AMERICAN SECRET SERVICE AGENT


Zandra Iona Flemister (November 21, 1951 – February 21, 2023) who was born in Frankfurt, Germany, was the first Female Afro American Secret Service Agent. Her father was a US Army sergeant, and her mother worked for the US government as a microfilm technician.


The family soon moved to France, where Ms. Flemister attended a French preschool. Ms. Flemister was roughly 5 when her parents separated. She moved to the United States and grew up in Connecticut, a White suburb of Hartford where, Ms. Flemister recalled, they received threatening calls at night from neighbors who resented their presence. She took ballet and piano lessons and attended civil rights demonstrations with her mother, who brought her to the 1963 March on Washington.
After graduating from Glastonbury High School in 1969, she received a bachelor's degree in political science from Northeastern University in 1973. Joining the Secret Service in 1974, she protected the daughters of two U.S. presidents: Susan Ford and Amy Carter. After she was subjected to intense racial discrimination from fellow agents and supervisors, she resigned from the agency in 1978 taking a pay cut to join the United States Foreign Service.


In over thirty-plus years of service, Flemister rose to the posts of consul general in Pakistan and senior State Department representative at the Terrorist Screening Center in Washington, D.C. She received a master's degree in military logistics from the National Defense University in 2003 and achieved promotion to Senior Foreign Service officer.


Drawing on what she described as her family’s “wealth of perseverance,” she was a wife, mother and a dominant reminder of the achievements that can be attained in the face of…prevailing racism.


In 2000, Flemister provided an affidavit in support of a class action lawsuit against the Secret Service alleging rampant racial discrimination. She testified that white agents openly engaged in overt racism, even more specifically using the n-word to refer to the Black presidents of Senegal and Grenada. She stated that though she reported the incident to her supervisor, no action was taken.
More than one hundred former agents became plaintiffs in the suit. In 2017, the Secret Service agreed to a $24 million settlement.


Flemister was in her early 60s, when she retired from the State Department in 2011 while experiencing the early onset of Alzheimer's disease. She died in 2023.


SEE; Collinge, John (2016). "A Foreign Service Officer's Alzheimer's Journey". American Foreign Service Association. Retrieved 2023-02-26.

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Photographic ArtBlack HistoryAmerican HistoryInspirationalWall Art