Memorandum on Additional Members of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice

To: Mr. Lawrence W. Cramer

From: Clarence Mitchell

Subject: Additional members of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice.

March 13, 1943

I have noted your memorandum of March 13 and wish to suggest the following things:1

  1. For Chairman of the Committee, it is my belief that Dr. Frank Graham would make the best choice of the three mentioned. While I know him by reputation only, I have been struck with the sense of social responsibility revealed in his opinion on the Little Steel case. I fear that Professor Howard Odom would not have sufficient prestige for the Chairmanship, and I definitely would not recommend Dr. Clark Howell.
  2. For members of the Committee, I believe that we need to make a sincere effort to secure some outstanding business men. Accordingly, I have previously recommended Mr. [Clarence G.] Stoll of the Western Electric Company. The company has done an outstanding job as I previously pointed out on the integration of Negroes. Prior to submitting my memorandum, I discussed Mr. Stoll’s availability with Mr. Detiz [Dietz] of Western Electric. At that time Mr. Detiz figured that it might not be possible to secure Mr. Stoll. Mr. Detiz felt that if we could not get Mr. Stoll himself, that Mr. William F. Hossford, Vice President of Western Electric, would be very desirable in that he has maintained a continuing interest in the Negro problem in the plant. Although I do not know either Mr. Stoll or Mr. Hossford personally, I feel that I know enough of the Western Electric people to believe that they are soundly approaching this problem.2

I do not know Bishop [Bernard J.] Shiel of Chicago personally, but I have long felt that the addition of some powerful Catholic clergyman would be of great help to our work.3

I have known of Mr. [Charles W.] Taussig’s work with the National Youth Administration which I believe was of an advisory nature, and, of course, I am aware of Mr. Sidney Hollander’s interest.

MS: copy, MP.

1. The FEPC was at the time soliciting recommendations for additional members of the Committee to submit a slate of nominees to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Committee’s final list was submitted on 3/1/43 (see Minutes, 3/15/43, in HqR1, Summary Minutes of Meetings). The list and the suggestions submitted by others were ultimately used as a guide for members of the new committee, particularly for the choice of the new chairman, rather than for replacing members who had resigned from the old Committee. Topping the FEPC’s list was Senator George Norris, who declined to serve.

Frank P. Graham, second on the FEPC list, was Clarence M. Mitchell Jr.’s preferred candidate. He was then a public member of the National War Labor Board. In 1942 the NWLB succeeded the National Defense Mediation Board, on which Graham also served. In 1941 the mediation board had developed a “maintenance-of-membership” compromise principle for settling the Snoqualmi Falls strike, involving a lumber company and a union in the Northwest. Rather than supporting union shops (in which all workers must eventually join the union), the formula established that unions could not compel newly hired workers to join, but those who did join were required to maintain their membership for the life of the union contract. The principle was applied in the Little Steel case by the NWLB in 1942 and in several other cases brought before the board. Graham was widely celebrated for devising the Little Steel decision, a compromise that also protected the rights of workers in closed shop situations. The decision guaranteed union membership but included clauses that protected the freedom of choice of individual workers as a means of settling a jurisdictional dispute between employer and union at the Ryan Aeronautical Company. See the text of Graham’s decision, “Union Rights in Wartime,” in The New Republic 6/29/42, 884–87; his letter on the Little Steel decision to NYT 7/25/42, 12; and “Frank Graham: Effective Liberal,” The New Republic 8/10/42, 164–66.

In addition to several other union-employer cases in which Graham used the Little Steel principle, he was celebrated for his pathbreaking opinion of 6/5/43 in the Southport Petroleum case. It abolished the separate job classifications of “colored laborer” and “white laborer” and declared that all workers must receive the same rate of pay regardless of race. Graham declined nomination to the FEPC owing to his commitments to the NWLB. See Warren Ashby, Frank Porter Graham: A Southern Liberal 171–91; Malcolm Ross, All Manner of Men 275–76. Mitchell subsequently would cite the unanimous NWLB precedent in the Southport Petroleum case as the standard for eliminating wage discrimination based on race. For the effort to apply the wage ruling to Mexican Americans, see Clete Daniel, Chicano Workers and the Politics of Fairness: The FEPC in the Southwest 150–51; Mitchell, speech to National Urban League conference, 9/9/43, Chicago, HqR39, Central Files. Memoranda, Ross, Malcolm, 1944.

None of the persons Mitchell recommended ever became members of the FEPC. Only Graham and Charles W. Taussig were on the list the FEPC submitted to Roosevelt. For additional information on the candidates, see the biographical directory. For discussions of the difficulty in securing members, particularly for chairman, see Louis Ruchames, Race, Jobs, and Politics: The Story of FEPC 54–56; and Daniel, Chicano Workers 134–38.


2. No Western Electric executive ever served on the FEPC. The business leaders appointed to the new Committee were Sara E. Southall of International Harvester and Samuel Zemurray of United Fruit Company.


3. In his memorandum to President Roosevelt of 1/29/43 regarding the Committee, Attorney General Francis B. Biddle had included among his recommendations for membership the suggestion that “a prominent Catholic” should be included. His nominees in that category included Bishop Bernard James Sheil, Monsignor Francis J. Haas, and Archbishop Edward Mooney of Detroit. See Official Files 4245G, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.; Frances Anne Hardin, “The Role of Presidential Advisers: Roosevelt Aides and the FEPC, 1941-43,” 103–5, 110.

The prominent Catholic clergyman on the FEPC’s list of nominees was Monsignor John A. Ryan, the American Catholic Church’s leading expert on social and economic questions. He held several New Deal posts and headed the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference from 1920 to 1945. Monsignor Haas, one of Biddle’s candidates, ultimately became chairman of the new Committee appointed in May 1943.