More than 1,000 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address "ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination" against Black employees, NPR has learned.

In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic's disproportionate impact on Black people and the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks. NPR obtained a copy of the letter, which is published below.

In the letter, the authors point to a variety of "well-meaning, yet under-funded" efforts to diversify the agency's workforce over the past several decades, and assert that none of them have made much difference. They note that Black employees represent only 10% of senior leadership and 6% of CDC's 2019 class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a fellowship program described as "the training ground for tomorrow's leaders within the agency."

It describes an "old boy/girl network" where white managers promote white staff while allegedly stifling and discouraging Black staff. It also says that hundreds of Equal Employment Opportunity complaints have been filed by Black employees in the past decades, many of them unresolved.