Monthly Report of the Labor Secretary, June, July 17, 1950

R O U G H D R A F T

MONTHLY REPORT OF LABOR SECRETARY
FOR JUNE

July 17, 1950

 

Russell Segregation Amendment

By a fast under cover movement, Senator Richard Russel[l] attached a pro-segregation amendment to the draft bill when it was reported out of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. Senator Morse, Saltonstahl [Saltonstall], and Knowland are the only members of this committee who would be friendly. Senators Morse and Saltonstahl stated that they were absent when the Russell amendment was included in the bill. We were unable to get a statement from Senator Knowland. However, he later joined Saltonstahl to propose a statement to eliminate the Russell amendment. Senator Morse advised that, since the committee had apparently unanimously approved the Russell amendment, there was a good chance it might pass unless we took action against it. We discussed the matter briefly with Senators Lucas and Douglas. A letter over the Secretary’s signature stimulated a large volume of branch communications to senators against the Russell amendment. It was defeated by a vote of [42] to [29].1

House Hearings on H. R. 7789

Hearings on a proposed amendment to permit union shop and check-off agreements in the railroad industry were closed by the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, although the NAACP had sought a chance to present testimony against the proposed legislation. Our testimony endorsed the principle of union shop and dues check-off, but opposed granting this right to railroad unions, unless they abandoned their practices of discrimination and segregation. We talked with Congressman Crosser, Chairman of the Committee, and discovered that someone had given the committee the impression that the NAACP would not wish to be present to testify. He agreed to reopen the hearings for the purpose of taking our testimony.

When we appeared, (Mr. Joseph [Joseph C.] Waddy and the Labor Secretary) almost the entire committee was present. Also called to testify at the reopened hearings was Mr. Theodore Brown, representing Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. We have received favorable comment from congressmen concerning the extent and value of the Association’s testimony. The fact that the hearings were reopened in response to the Association’s protest is a tribute to the prestige of our organization and the fairness of the Chairman of the Committee.2

Migratory Labor

As has been mentioned in previous reports, the Association’s Labor Department has actively urged the creation of a special committee to study conditions among migratory workers.3 The purpose of this commission, as we saw it, was dramatizing the plight of migratory agricultural workers. Approximately one-third of these workers are colored. Due to poor advice, the commission when appointed, did not include a colored member. The Secretary has urged the President to include a qualified colored person on the committee.4

ANTI-FEPC Bill

S. 3050 is a bill designed to strike at the favorable result of a decision rendered by the President’s Fair Employment Board in a case involving colored veterans employed at the Bureau of Engraving. We have already urged senators to oppose this legislation and, in addition, this month, we urged President Green of the AFL to oppose the legislation. The principal backers of the bill are members of the ?????5

Their apparent objective is to keep that operation under which they are employed all white.

D.C. Swimming Pools

Six swimming pools in the District of Columbia under the direction of the Department of Interior or now operating on a non-segregated basis.6 The Association has done an effective job in preventing the consideration of legislation which would transfer these pools to the D.C. Board of Recreation. The effect of the transfer, of course, would be to restore segregation to the pools. On June 20, 1950, we received a reply to a communication we sent to Secretary Chapman.7 It reads as follows:

“I wish to thank you for your letter of May 29 suggesting that the assignment of U. S. Park Police to the swimming pools during the coming months be made on an interracial basis.

“In arranging for the opening of the pools, we have followed the regular police assignment roster. In this way, both White and Negro police officers have been on duty at the pools and no change of policy was necessary to effect that arrangement.

“I fully agree with you that the government policy of impartiality will be clearly demonstrated by the assignment of both White and Negro policemen to the pools. This policy followed last season with good effect, and the authority of all of the officers was accepted without resentment.

I greatly appreciate the cooperation which you personally and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People continue to extend to the Department of the Interior.”

Speeches and Articles

The Labor Secretary spoke at the North Carolina State Conference of Branches in Fayetteville and at the closing meeting for the session of the D. C. Branch of the NAACP. Replies were made concerning statements appearing against FEPC in the Washington Journal and by Ex-Senator Joseph Ball.

This draft report was not sent because Mitchell knew Walter White was about to appoint him director of the Washington bureau following the resignation of Leslie Perry, the bureau’s administrative assistant, on July 31. Portions of the text were revised and included in his first monthly report, combined for July and August, as bureau director.

At the end of the text appears the following handwritten note by the Washington bureau secretary, Mae B. Hendricks: “Mr. C.M. / You said you wanted a paragraph on testimony of agricultural workers. / Mae.” That was a reference to Mitchell’s testimony on July  before the President’s Commission on Migratory Workers; information on that topic was included in Mitchell’s Washington bureau report.

MS: draft, NAACP II: A-537, DLC, endorsed “not sent.”

[1] See, most immediately, 8/31 and 12/21/50; in appendix 1, vol. IV, 3/16/48, 12/31/50. See also Mitchell, “Status of Racial Integration in the Armed Services,” 208–13.


[2] See, in appendix 1, vol. IV, 6/7/50. Mitchell and Waddy testified jointly on the Railway Labor Act amendments before the Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on May 18, 1950, and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on June 7, 1950, “in favor of the principles embodied in the bill but in opposition to the bill as drawn” (Mitchell’s letter of 6/1/50 to Elton J. Layton, clerk, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, NAACP IX: 197, DLC).

They prepared their statement together to save time, Mitchell explained in a letter of 5/26/50 to Daniel Seligman of Fortune magazine. In another letter, of 5/31/50, Mitchell told Rep. Robert Crosser of the House Interstate Committee that HR 7789 would be “very dangerous legislation” were it to be approved in its current form. Since 1920, he told Crosser, the number of black locomotive firemen had dropped from 6,505 to 2,356, and the number of black brakemen, switchmen, and flagmen had dropped from 7,609 to 2,857 because of virulent discrimination by the unions. In another letter of 6/8/50, Mitchell explained to Rep. Charles A. Wolverton, a member of the House Interstate Committee, that the lengthy statement was “necessary to present our case in detail in order that the committee” could see that the complaint of discrimination was “a carefully organized and highly effective means of depriving colored men of their jobs in the railroad industry.” In many instances, he said, the NAACP appeared before congressional committees to seek legislation that would open new opportunities for African Americans. In this case, the NAACP was “in a desperate fight to hold the line against a powerful union-management combination.”

Related letters and documents are in NAACP WB-160, DLC. See, in appendix 1, vol. IV, text of Waddy-Mitchell statement, 6/7/50; 6/7/50, Hearings 285–302; 5/18/50, Hearings 242–302.


[3] President Truman appointed the commission in June 1950. (On April 7, 1951, Truman announced that he had received the report of the commission.) See http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=287. See Mitchell’s statement before the Commission on Migratory Workers on 7/13/50 in appendix 1, vol. IV, and 220.7.13 Records, available at http://www.archives.gov/ research/guide-fed-records/groups/220.html.


[4] White’s request to Truman was first approved by the board, which accepted Mitchell’s recommendation that the association ask the president to appoint an African American to the commission. Minutes, 6/12/50, EC.


[5] See 3/3, 5/1, and 5/3/50 for earlier developments in this struggle. Apparently, temporarily helping to kill this effort was the growing preoccupation with the Korean War. See 11/3/50. For subsequent efforts to reverse the Fair Employment Board’s decision, see 5/3/51.


[6] See materials in NAACP IX: 226, DLC.


[7] Chapman, of course, came under heavy fire for his progressive racial policies. Defending him in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post Mitchell took issue with the newspaper’s editorial of April 10, 1950, as “unfair and against the best interests of the nation’s capital. You accuse Mr. Chapman of being arbitrary because he insists the six swimming pools under the control of the Department of Interior be operated on a non-segregated basis. . . . It is extremely late in world affairs to expect that the Secretary of the Interior or any other important Department of Government should turn over Federal property to those who would operate it on a basis of segregation and discrimination.” Letter to the editor, Washington Post 4/12/50, in NAACP IX: 226, DLC. (In an April 5, 1956, column for the Courier newspapers, Mitchell explained that, historically, the Democrats’ maneuvering in Congress had brought some progress in areas such as integration of the armed services and inflicted “sturdy blows at segregation in the District of Columbia.” So “it must never be forgotten that it was a Democrat, Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman, who donned a bathing suit himself to see how his department was carrying out integration in the Capital’s swimming pools.” See MP.) See also 5/31 and 7–8/50; 8/31/51 for continuation of this aspect of the struggle.