On June 25, 1941, President
Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 creating the Fair
Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). The order banned
racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving
federal contracts by declaring "there shall be no discrimination
in the employment of workers in defense industries or government
because of race, creed, color, or national origin." The
order also empowered the FEPC to investigate complaints
and take action against alleged employment discrimination.
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters President A. Philip
Randolph, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White, and NYA
Minority Affairs Director Mary
McLeod Bethune forced FDR to address the issue. Randolph,
working with other civil rights activists, organized
the
1941 March on Washington Movement to protest racial discrimination
in defense industry and the military and threatened to
bring 250,000
African Americans to Washington to demonstrate against
congressional resistance to fair employment. FDR sent
ER and New York
City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to negotiate with March on
Washington leaders. ER returned, telling FDR that their
plans were firm, that only an antidiscrimination ordinance
would prevent what promised to be the largest demonstration
in our capital's history. ER urged FDR to act for both
moral and political reasons. FDR agreed, but would only
go so
far. He agreed to have th FEPC prohibit discrimination
in defense plants, but he refused to address the issue
of segregation
in the military, which had been Randolph's original concern.
The lure of defense industry jobs and promise of the
FEPC triggered an enormous migration of African Americans
from
the South to defense plants. However, most African Americans
were hired for menial jobs. A reluctant defense industry
refused to comply with the order, arguing that if African
Americans were hired as janitors, employers would be forced
to integrate
their workforce. In 1943, FDR decided to strengthen the
FEPC after learning about how some employers were violating
the spirit of the new order. As a result, he increased
the FEPC budget to nearly half a million dollars and replaced
the part-time Washington, D.C., staff with a professional
full-time staff distributed throughout the country. By
war's
end the number of jobs held by African Americans was at
an all-time high: African American civilians accounted
for
eight percent of defense-industry jobs, whereas before
the war they only held three percent, and 200,000 thousand
were
employed
by the government, more than triple the number before the
war. A majority of those employed, however, still held
menial
jobs.
FDR's sudden death and the war's end left the FEPC in
limbo. Congress, receiving mixed messages from the Truman
administration, split over how best to address the issue
and debated whether to extend the FEPC for a few years,
make it a permanent commission, or not renew its charter.
ER lent very active support to the bill creating a permanent
FEPC. The Senate disagreed and let the FEPC die in1946.
However, FEPC congressional supporters refused to yield
and twice
introduced bills calling for a permanent FEPC. Both bills
failed. In 1948 Truman, after reading the recommendations
of his
Commission on Civil Rights, sent a civil rights package
to Congress calling for a permanent FEPC, antilynching
legislation,
and the abolishment of the poll tax. The conservative coalition
in Congress blocked Truman's request. In 1950, the House
approved a permanent FEPC bill but southern senators filibustered
and killed the bill. Truman increasingly focused on the
growing Korean War and foreign
policy replaced the Fair Deal as his major concern.
Sources:
Black, Allida. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt
and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996, 54-55.
Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American
People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999, 764-769, 774-775
Kirkendall, Richard S., ed. The Harry S. Truman Encyclopedia.
Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1989, 57-59.