The following year, Carey was appointed as an alternate delegate from the United States to the United Nations, serving from 1953 to 1956. From 1955 to 1961, he served on the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy; on August 3, 1957, he was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as Chair of the committee, succeeding Maxwell Abbell, who died. Carey was the first African American to hold this position. Already a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. and active in the national civil rights movement, Carey worked to end employment discrimination in the government against blacks.