Memorandum on Railroad Complaints

To: George M. Johnson

From: Clarence Mitchell

Subject: Railroad complaints

December 28, 1942

In accordance with your assignment I am leaving to investigate complaints for the railroad hearings on January 25, 26, and 27.1 Mr. Hubbard has given me complaints filed by witnesses who live in Chicago, Dayton, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio. There are one or two complaints from East St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio, but Mr. Hubbard felt that these cities need not be visited since they involve the same railroads against which a number of persons have complained in Chicago.

I understand that you will make the necessary arrangements to have Mr. Austin H. Scott work with me. Mr. Hubbard is to contact Mr. Hielman of the CIO, whose office is in Youngstown, with the request that this gentleman join me in Cleveland on December 31 or at any other time which is convenient for him for the purpose of working on the complaints we have in the Cleveland area.

While in Chicago, I expect to stop at the Southway Hotel and I can be reached there or at Mr. Scott’s office. His telephone is ANdover 3600. I will advise you of other locations at which I can be reached after I confer with Mr. Scott on Tuesday. I hope to be back in the office by January 7.

MS: LH, DI, HqR37, Central Files. (entry 25) Hearings, Railroads.

1. Owing to fierce pressure from the railroads, the hearings in what would become the FEPC’s legendary battle over the Southeastern Carriers Conference Agreement were not held as scheduled, creating the biggest hornet’s nest in domestic politics for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The roots of discrimination in the railroad industry were deep and violent, so deep that the central issues of the exclusion of blacks from closed union shops under the agreement had to be decided—in the FEPC’s favor—in the Steele v. Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company and Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen cases. For contemporary accounts, see Jonathan Daniels, “Brotherhood Except for Negroes," Nation 11/22/41, 513; “Occupational Status of Negro Railroad Employees,” Monthly Labor Review 3/43, 484–85; “Principal American Labor Unions: The Railroad Brotherhoods,” Congressional Digest 11/41, 265; “Coming Out Into the Open,” Commonweal 12/24/43, 244; “FEPC v. the Railroads,” Time 12/27/43, 18; “Railroads Demur, Notify FEPC They Won’t Obey Negro-Hiring Order,” Business Week 12/18/43, 103; Malcolm H. ("Mike") Ross, before the House Select Committee to Investigate Executive Agencies, “The Railroad Cases,” H. Res. 102, 3/14/44; Charles H. Houston, in HqR6, Office Files of George M. Johnson. Railroad Cases; “Foul Employment Practice on the Rails,” Crisis 10/49, 269–71. See also the headnote on the FEPC and Unions; First Report 62; Herbert R. Northrup, Organized Labor and the Negro 55–64, 100–1; Denton L. Watson, Lion in the Lobby: Clarence Mitchell, Jr.'s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Laws, 139–40.