The Present Status and Programs of Fair Employment Practices Commissions-Federal, State, and Municipal

Abstract

On June 25, 1941 President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 which authorized the formation of the President's Fair Employment Practice Committee, which became familiarly known as FEPC. After undergoing several administrative and placement vicissitudes, FEPC on May 27, 1943 by Executive Order 9346 was recreated as an independent agency within the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President. Federal government departments and agencies as employers now were explicitly covered along with war industries, unions and war-training programs. Clothed with the right to formulate policies to achieve the purposes of this order this Committee was to recommend to Federal departments and agencies feasible methods of implementing its aims. Continued this time without War Manpower Commission restrictions was FEPC's right to receive, investigate and conduct hearings involving complaints of employment discrimination. Although FEPC was implementing our traditional belief in equality of economic opportunity much opposition developed against it. Despite its efforts to unleash minority group manpower to materially aid our war efforts there were those who were willing for the lives of many Americans and the Allied cause to be further endangered by supporting vigorously our pattern of employment discrimination. They resented FEPC's intrusion and sought to discredit it by processes ranging from attacks on its constitutionality to accusations that it was Communist.