Fair Employment Practice Committee
Established in the Office of Production Management, the FEPC was intended to help African Americans and other minorities obtain jobs in home front industries during World War II.
The FEPC appeared to have contributed to substantial economic improvements among black men during the 1940s by helping them gain entry to more skilled and higher-paying positions in defense-related industries.
[2] Analysis of the incomes of blacks who gained entree into the defense industries compared to men outside them showed that they benefited from the higher wages and generally retained their jobs in the early postwar years until 1950.
"[1] A. Philip Randolph, the founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, had lobbied with other activists for such provisions because of the wide discrimination against African Americans in employment across the country.
Together with other activists, Rudolph planned to muster tens of thousands of persons for a 1941 March on Washington to protest the continued segregation in the military and discrimination in defense industries.
A week before the planned march, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia met with him and other officials to discuss the president's intent to issue an executive order announcing a policy of non-discrimination in federal vocational and training programs.
Etheridge brought "important political connections and public relations expertise to the job" but "emphasized interracial cooperation over equality and refused to challenge the southern system of segregation.
"[3] Knowing that industry was likely to be hostile, Randolph and other activists believed that the FEPC would depend on workers keeping their own records as to practices at workplaces and taking cases of discrimination to the committee.
During the second round of hearings on the executive order, held in Chicago and New York in January and February 1942 after US entry into World War II, supporters of the policy spoke.
Support was high in these cities for several reasons: some positions with the FEPC were held by influential black attorneys who also worked closely with activists from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the NAACP, and other prominent groups.
Also, in both cities "activists [had] formed Metropolitan Fair Employment Practice Councils to help workers document discrimination and bring complaints before the FEPC and push local officials to implement Roosevelt's order.
Within a year of the executive order being issued, the number of African Americans and other minorities being employed by the defense industries had increased, especially in shipbuilding and aircraft plants.
The Fair Employment Practice Committee encountered great resistance in the South, where states had disfranchised blacks since the turn of the century and maintained legal segregation in public facilities under their Jim Crow laws.
The executive order was strongly opposed by local employers and elected officials, as well as most white workers, and the civil rights organizations were not as influential because blacks were generally closed out of the political system, despite their significant portion of the population in many areas of the region.
Congressional attacks, including from powerful Southern Democrats, took place when the FEPC was required to testify before the House of Representatives Committee that oversaw its program.
[4] If the proposal had passed, the FEPC would likely have had even less money to carry out its program of holding hearings and taking testimony, as well as collecting and analyzing data from companies.
As a start, the chairman of the War Manpower Commission "slashed its budget, denied requests for office space, and refused to aid in conflicts with discriminatory contractors.
During World War II the federal government was operating airfields, shipyards, supply centers, ammunition plants, and other facilities that employed millions.
The FEPC expanded its jurisdiction to federal government departments and agencies as employers; they were "now were explicitly covered along with war industries, unions, and war-training programs.
"[4] Agency records show that New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, all major sites of defense industries, were the cities with the largest number of cases filed with the FEPC, about 200 in each place.
"[3] Continuing tensions in cities that were booming with increased populations for the defense industries erupted in race riots in 1943 in Detroit, Los Angeles, Mobile, Alabama; and Beaumont, Texas.
Still operating effectively with one-party systems in their states due to disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century, Southern Democrats had powerful positions in Congress, controlling chairmanships of important committees, and opposed these measures.
