Annual Report of the Labor Department, December 20, 1948

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE LABOR DEPARTMENT

[December 20, 1948]

 

Executive Order 9980

The high spot of the Labor Department’s Activities this year came when President Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9980 forbidding discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin in the Federal Service.1 On August 25, 1948, Dr. Louis T. Wright, Chairman of the Board, sent to the Branches of the NAACP and all Board Members a detailed statement on the efforts of the NAACP to bring about the issuance of this order. These efforts extended over a two-year period. Without them the importance of having such an order would not have been dramatized and Federal employees would today face unchecked discriminatory practices.2

Discrimination in the Federal Service has not ceased because of the issuance of this order. However, of the agencies we have contacted, eighteen have established procedures for handling complaints of discrimination. What is more important, some of these agencies are studying their personnel practices for the purpose of preventing discrimination. This is particularly true of the Federal Security Agency and the Office of the Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Such procedures, of course, will be no better than we can make them by giving constant attention to the employment policies.

We have met with the President’s Fair Employment Board and we recommended that emphasis be placed on positive action in eliminating discrimination rather than mere hearings based on individual cases.3 Joining with the Association at this meeting were George L. P. Weaver of the CIO Anti-Discrimination Committee and Joseph Clorety, Vice Chairman of the American Veterans Committee.

The Labor Secretary served on a committee appointed by Mr. Oscar Ewing to review certain practices of segregation and discrimination in the Bureau of Old Age and Survivors Insurance.4 The committee made its report to Mr. Ewing on June 18, 1948, and he instructed the agency to follow the recommendations therein. He also made it possible to have a follow-up meeting with the agency on December 17 for the purpose of studying how many of the recommendations have been put into effect. This is the kind of approach to the problems of government discrimination we hope the President’s Fair Employment Board will follow.5

It will be recalled that the Labor Department was responsible for a Senate investigation of discrimination in the Federal Post Office.6 The outstanding result of this investigation was the cracking of a twenty-year practice of the Post Office in Memphis of not appointing colored people as clerks. The success of this is significant because opposition included the Postmaster of Memphis, who is a brother of Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Boss Ed Crump of Memphis.7

On the credit side of the ledger, we must also include commitments from the Veterans Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission that all contracts for construction and production which require the employment of persons will carry non-discrimination clauses when signed by those agencies. Here again, the value of this will depend on how alert the Labor Department and our local branches are in challenging discriminatory practices of the contractors and invoking this clause when such practices are discovered.

We sincerely hope that all Federal officials who ignore or boldly refuse to follow the requirements of Executive Order 9980 will suffer the fate of Mr. Mortimer Jordan, Collector of Internal Revenue in Alabama. Mr. Jordan informed the Treasury Department that he could not follow the requirements of the President’s Executive Order. The Treasury Department informed him that his letter was interpreted as a letter of resignation. A new collector was appointed forthwith.

There are some negative factors which we must also mention. The Army has been recruiting postal employees for official units which will be called into service during war-time. Notices posted in Post Offices in many parts of the country have specified that white persons only are accepted. Although some of the notices which were directed to our attention were removed, the problem is still unsolved. This is part of a larger program aimed at properly using industrial workers in war-time. Unless corrected, this practice may place the Army in the position of promoting segregation in industry and private employment during a national emergency.9

We also cite as another of the numerous failures in the 80th Congress the refusal to heed the NAACP’s request that all State employment offices be required to end segregation and refuse to accept discriminatory job orders, since they were receiving Federal funds for their operations.10

National and State FEPC Legislation

During the year, the Labor Department has dealt with top management of the Sears Roebuck Company, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and others. With rare exceptions, these companies follow fair employment practices only in those states where they are legally required to do so. There is also a striking difference in the practices in those states where we have good FEPC legislation and those states where the legislation is poor.

Because employment is high, many persons are lulled into a false sense of security on the extent of employment discrimination in the United States. A major objective of the Labor Department’s program is passage of Federal and State Fair Employment Practice legislation. In preparation for the campaign for Federal action, the Labor Department has asked branches in fifty-one major industrial areas to participate in a study of employment practices in the largest firms of those cities.11

An analysis of data supplied by eight cities on the employment policies of nineteen firms has been made by the Labor Department. These firms employ over 70,000 persons. Reports on thirteen of them show that they barred colored persons from all skilled jobs although they employ well over 10,000 skilled white persons. Eleven of these firms have apprentice training programs, but only two of them permit colored persons to participate in these programs. Nine of them have programs of accepting graduates of vocational schools for employment on jobs for which they have been trained, but only two of them take colored vocational school graduates. In one Kansas City firm the notation was made that colored graduates of vocational schools are hired as car-washers and yard-men only. In another city which is famous for its production of beer, the branch of the NAACP reports that all of the major brewery companies refuse to employ colored people. The reports also include notations of how labor unions have made efforts to get the employers to change hiring and upgrading practices without success.12

We report with regret an action of the International Association of Machinists involving a colored employee in Houston, Texas, who was deprived of his seniority following a dispute with management. We attempted to adjust this matter through the headquarters office of the Machinists and were referred to a regional officer in Alabama. He in turn referred us to a representative of the Machinists in Texas. The matter is still unsettled. We are glad to report that this type of run around as given by the Machinists is not characteristic of labor organizations, but it is sufficiently serious to underscore the importance of fair employment practice legislation.

The Labor Secretary, at the invitation of the Pittsburgh Branch of the NAACP, has been organizing support for the passage of state legislation in Pennsylvania. The NAACP agreed to organize local committees in eight western counties of the state. Other national organizations have sent representatives in to work in various parts of the state. The Pittsburgh Branch and the Pennsylvania State Conference are sharing in the expenses of travel and maintenance required for this project. We are optimistic about the possibility of getting the legislation passed in Pennsylvania and also hope that we shall have success in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.

We have consistently urged the branches in those states where FEPC laws exist to make full use of this legislation and to guard against the practice of some employers who recruit in a discriminatory manner outside the state for work to be performed within the borders of the state. At our suggestion, the New England Conference of Branches has placed this problem of discriminatory recruitment before the Connecticut and Massachusetts FEPC Agencies. In Connecticut, we are informed, an investigation of practices followed by certain employers who have done extensive recruiting in Pennsylvania is underway.

Farm Workers

During the year, we joined with Mr. H. L. Mitchell, President of the National Farm Labor Union, AFL, and others in a meeting with Under-Secretary David Morse of the Department of Labor to work against the importation of foreign agricultural workers into areas where United States citizens could be used, if proper wages and decent working conditions were offered to those seeking jobs. The Department of Labor contended that it was necessary to import foreign workers because of shortages in this field.13

Mr. H. L. Mitchell suggested that ample supplies of labor existed, but various employer practices prevented the full use of this labor. The Labor Secretary of the NAACP proposed that Arkansas and southeastern Missouri be used as a testing ground to determine whether surplus agricultural labor could be found in that area for use in other parts of the country because the Farm Labor Union felt that in this geographic area a number of persons were idle who could be used in other places. Unfortunately, the Department of Labor did not develop a real program for utilizing our own citizens. As a result thousands of foreign workers needlessly came into the country. On the basis of our conference with the Department of Labor and the United States Employment Service representatives, it is clear that if our own citizens are properly utilized, there would be a drastic reduction in the number of foreign persons needed to harvest our crops.

Those members of the 80th Congress who pretended to be interested in economy, while destroying important Federal programs through budget slashes, were a major stumbling block in the path of those who sought to get an orderly distribution of our agricultural labor supply. We shall work to remedy this condition in the new Congress.

Labor Legislation

During the year, the Labor Secretary was speaker at conventions and meetings sponsored by the AFL, the CIO, and the National Alliance of Postal Employees. Among the most important of these meetings were the CIO’s Civil Rights Conference in Cleveland and the UAW Conference, on the same subject, in Philadelphia. The Labor Secretary was told by members of the American Federation of Labor that his speech at the 42nd Convention of the Maryland State and District of Columbia Federation of Labor in the Statler Hotel marked the first time a non-white individual had been invited to be a guest speaker other than for the purpose of making an announcement or offering a prayer.

We have attempted through written articles and speeches to show the public how serious a threat the Taft-Hartley Act is to the interest of organized labor.14 We also protested to the Attorney General on behalf of the Packing House Workers when the police of Kansas City assaulted them and brutally beat a number of individuals.15 Thirty per cent of those involved were colored. The Labor Secretary aided government cafeteria employees in Washington who are largely colored in their effort to gain pay raises and better working conditions during the past year. This effort on the part of the cafeteria workers provoked a confusing and difficult controversy with a special committee of Congress, headed by Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan.16 In New Mexico, our branches aided in the defeat of a so-called Right-to-Work Amendment which was really anti-labor legislation.17

During the coming session of Congress, we will aid in the drive to repeal the Taft- Hartley Law and we shall work for the passage of legislation which will secure the rights of all union men regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. A year of activity under the Taft-Hartley Act showed that it had nothing constructive to offer colored wage earners and a so-called FEPC provision of the law was a pure fake.18

Loyalty Investigations

Under the present Federal program of investigating government workers for loyalty, there is much evidence that colored persons are unjustly charged with disloyalty because of their association with liberal causes and their fight against discrimination. In some instances white persons are questioned on their association with colored people. The Pittsburgh Press of December 9, 1948, quotes an unnamed official of the Loyalty Board as saying that questions on racial matters, marriage, and religion were valuable in cases of persons suspected of communist leanings.19

From Cleveland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and other important cities, we have received requests for aid from employees who are charged with disloyalty because they have been active on matters affecting civil rights. The Board of Directors on November 8, 1948, voted that the NAACP will intervene in loyalty cases where the whole charge or a part thereof is based upon:

    Race or color of the persons or person involved.

    Membership or activity in the NAACP.

    Membership or activity in any coordinating group approved by the National Office of the NAACP.20

We are glad to report that the President of the Santa Monica, California, NAACP Branch, who was charged with disloyalty because he led a fight for jobs in the Sears Roebuck Store has been cleared of these charges. There are many other cases pending, however, and there is a real need for a review of the present operation of the Federal loyalty program.21

National and State Labor Committees

The Association’s National Labor Committee lost Mr. Frank Fenton, Director of Organization for the AFL, when he died of a heart attack during the past year. Mr. Boris Shishkin also of the AFL, a member of the Labor Committee, is now in Paris with the ECA. Other members have been most useful in carrying out assignments which would normally be the responsibility of staff persons if we could afford to hire such persons. Here, we give special mention to Mr. Weaver, whose name appears elsewhere in this report, and Mr. William Oliver, Co-Director of the UAW’s Fair Practices Committee. It is also gratifying to note that in some areas various individuals are taking a deep interest in promoting activity of Labor Committees. One such person who has been especially active is the Reverend Forrest Lewis of Charleston, West Virginia, who has organized a number of Labor Committees throughout the State.

Speeches, Travel, and Publications

During the year, the Labor Secretary traveled 6,884 miles in filling speaking engagements, assignments, and performing other duties in eleven states. The Secretary also prepared a report on the operation of the Taft-Hartley Law which was published in the Crisis magazine and an article on discrimination in the postal service which appeared in the Postal Alliance the official organ of the National Alliance of Postal Employees.22

MS: MP.

[1] See 4/30 and 8/31/48 and notes for both reports.


[2] See, in appendix 1, vol. IV, 8/20/48.


[3] Fighting discrimination on an individual basis was the pattern at the FEPC because there were no other means for doing so. See volumes I and II.


[4] See 5/28 and 9/30/48 and, in appendix 1, vol. IV, 6/18/48 for earlier reports on discrimination problems at the OASI.


[5] In a “Three Minute Summary” of the 1948 annual report, dated 3/3/49, Mitchell stressed “two important points,” the second of which related to the U.S. Civil Service Committee report on discrimination in the federal service. Mitchell said he was gratified that the report had resulted from the NAACP’s charges. He added:

We are gratified also because we have the means of achieving sweeping reforms in Federal employment. This is so because the Association’s three year program of work for a Federal Fair Employment Board was climaxed with success when President Truman issued an executive order [9980] on this subject.

Mr. Oscar Ewing, the Federal Security Administrator, has led the way in attacking discrimination in his own agency. He has used the services of the NAACP labor secretary and others in accomplishing needed reforms. A story in the Washington Star last week quoted the Federal Fair Employment Board as saying that recommendations of the NAACP, the C.I.O, and the A.V.C. submitted jointly just before the Christmas holiday would greatly aid the board in its operations. Eighteen agencies have informed us that they have appointed fair employment officers and have drawn up, or are working on, procedures for implementing the order. We are pleased to report that this list includes the Department of State. [See 10/31/47 report for problems at the State Department.]

There are two dramatic illustrations of the effect of this order in the south.

a. Mortimer Jordan, collector of internal revenue in Alabama informed the Treasury Department that he could not follow the requirements of the Fair Employment order. The Treasury informed him that his letter was interpreted as his resignation and a new collector was appointed. [See 10/31/47 report for problems at the Treasury Department.]

b. The postmaster in Winston Salem, North Carolina, was quoted as saying that no colored people would ever be employed as carriers or clerks as long as he served as postmaster. Our branch in Winston Salem furnished the labor department with the names of sixteen colored veterans and others who were willfully passed over by the postmaster because of their race. On December 29 the Hon. Harry B. Mitchell, chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, informed the NAACP that, although the original list on which the names of these men appeared has expired, they would be placed at the top of a new list and the postmaster would be required to consider them for appointment solely on the basis of merit. We know of no way the postmaster can get around this decision and we hope that his government career is drawing to a close. (NAACP IX: 200, DLC)


[6] The report confirmed that racial discrimination was widespread throughout the postal service. It was prepared in response to complaints Mitchell made during the hearing on the nomination of Jesse M. Donaldson to be postmaster general. See preview of NNPA’s lengthy news story by Louis Lautier, which the reporter provided to Mitchell, NAACP WB-154, DLC. See also 12/9/47, Hearings 6–15.


[7] See 12/1/48.


[8] See ibid. for an earlier report on Treasury’s upholding of EO 9980.


[9] See 8/31/48 for an earlier report on this problem.


[10] See, among others, 4/30/38.


[11] See, most immediately, 2/5, 4/30, 8/31, and 12/1/48 and the headnote on the Struggle for a Permanent FEPC.


[12] This problem of high unemployment discrimination throughout the country was the first of “two important points” that Mitchell stressed in the “Three Minute Summary” of the 1948 annual report dated March 3, 1949. This problem, he said, underscored “the importance of work” the NAACP Labor Department had been doing and would “continue to do for passage of fair employment practice laws.” NAACP IX: 200, DLC.


[13] See 2/5, 4/30, 8/31, and 11/1/48 for the most recent efforts involving migratory workers or the importation of foreign agricultural workers.


[14] See, in appendix 1, vol. IV, 10/31/48.


[15] See 5/28/48 report on packinghouse workers.


[16] See 2/5/46 and notes on the GSI workers and implications relating to the Taft-Hartley Act struggle.


[17] See 11/1 and 12/1/48 for defeat of the right-to-work amendment.


[18] See note 13 above.


[19] At its meeting on November 8, 1948, the NAACP board reversed itself on action it had taken at the meeting of November 19, 1947, and voted not to ask the president to appoint African Americans to the LRB. Several members of the board thought better of the idea. One reason, no doubt, was their alarm over the scope of the loyalty progam under which “at least five nationally known colored government employees” had been charged with disloyalty based on information gathered by the House Un-American Activities Committee, headed by John Rankin of Mississippi, an unabashed racist. Walter White also reported to the board that two of its members had been charged with disloyalty apparently because of their civil rights activities and the fact that they had urged friends of the NAACP to vote for Truman. For other developments around the same time, see 9/30 and 11/1/48.


[20] Minutes, 11/8/48. Mitchell drafted a letter to Truman for either Roy Wilkins’s or Walter White’s signature, calling the president’s attention to the “increasing tendency on the part of government agencies to associate activity on interracial matters with disloyalty,” a practice that had been his primary concern from the beginning of the program. The draft explained that the NAACP had “information on charges filed against black and white government workers in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore.” The letter proposed that, with a fair hearing, those persons would “undoubtedly obtain complete exoneration.” Draft letter, 11/18/48, attached to Mitchell memorandum to Wilkins, 11/18/48, NAACP WB-126, DLC.

As further demonstration of the racism behind many of the charges against blacks, Mitchell sent Wilkins a copy of a Washington Post editorial from December 2, 1949, decrying the attempt by a regional loyalty review board to charge a federal employee with subversion because he said that medical opinion had found no distinction between the blood of whites and blacks for use in transfusions. Wilkins forwarded the editorial to White with an attached note from Mitchell suggesting that White invite designated Catholics to a meeting the executive secretary was planning to hold on the loyalty probes. NAACP II: A-203, DLC. See also the headnote on National Origin, Alienage, and Loyalty in volume I.


[21] For earlier developments, see 5/28/48. Walter White credited this success in representing Frank Barnes with the “very definite stand regarding the question of loyalty probes among government workers” that the NAACP took. “Our efforts toward safeguarding the rights of Negroes in this respect were rewarded when Frank Barnes, president of our branch in Santa Monica, California, was reinstated in his job in the Post Office in that city.” White’s report to the Fortieth Annual Meeting, 1/3/49, EC. See also 5/28/48.


[22] See, in appendix 1, vol. IV, Mitchell’s article at 10/31/48.