The first Black woman to serve as a special agent in the Secret Service and who was “a trailblazer who dedicated her life to service and inspired a future generation of agents,” according to a close colleague, has died in Maryland from respiratory failure as a result of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 71.
Zandra Iona Flemister was born in 1951 in Frankfurt, Germany where her father served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army. Her mother worked as a microfilm technician for the U.S. government, and she would eventually follow in their footsteps to work in public service as well. Her family would then move to France before moving to Connecticut where she saw firsthand the debilitating effects of racism.
“Shortly before she entered high school, Ms. Flemister and her mother moved to a White suburb of Hartford where, Ms. Flemister recalled, they received threatening calls at night from neighbors who resented their presence,” according to a report in The Washington Post.
She would eventually be a standout star in high school where she easily made her way into social circles and international clubs. At Northeastern University, she was awarded a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1973, then briefly did a stint as a buyer for a department store.
But deep down, she knew she wanted to prepare herself for work in government.
“It was government service for which I had prepared, and to government service I was destined to go,” she wrote in a biographical sketch.
She would eventually apply for the Secret Service after meeting a recruiter at a job fair and rose the ranks in the Service to help protect the families of the nation’s chief executives, including Susan Ford, President Gerald Ford’s teenage daughter and Amy Carter, the daughter of President Jimmy Carter.
However, her top roles at the Secret Service did not come without trials. From the very beginning of her governmental career, she “endured acts of racism and discrimination that would ultimately drive her from the agency she had so eagerly hoped to serve,” wrote The Washington Post.
“She was often relegated to undesirable roles within the agency, which investigates forgery, counterfeiting and other financial crimes in addition to protecting the president, vice president and other dignitaries and their families,” the report reads.
Ms. Flemister recalled one time being “embarrassed and humiliated” after a fellow agent gestured to her and asked, “whose prisoner is she?”
In another instance, one of her superiors mentioned that if she wanted higher-paying, prestigious roles, she would need to cut off her natural hair, which she wore in an Afro. She would eventually cut off her hair only to be placed on protective duty where she felt like she was only there “for exhibition” and to make the Secret Service appear more “racially diverse.”
In 1978, Ms. Flemister resigned from the Secret Service because of her race, writing that the because of the color of her skin, “I would never be allowed to have a successful career in the Secret Service.”
She would eventually join the State Department as a specialist in consular affairs and would go back to school where she received a master’s degree in military logistics from the National Defense University.
“When Zandra and I joined the State Department, there were very few women and an even smaller number of Black women,” Joyce Barr, a 37-year veteran of the Foreign Service and former ambassador to Namibia, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “It was very, very challenging because people assumed that you were only there because of your gender and your skin color and that you were inherently ineffective — that’s the way they would approach you.” Ms. Flemister is survived by her husband, John Collinge, and her son, Samuel Collinge.
