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of a large proportion of the local building trades artisans, particularly carpenters. Out of the earlier experience of the Federal Government in securing work opportunities for Negro skilled workers, it was possible for O. P. M. to encourage the employment of Negro mechanics on this construction.

(NOTE.-Weaver, Racial Employment Trends in National Defense, op. cit., pp. 352-356.)

At the same time there were evidences of the absorption of Negroes in the iron and steel industry and in shipbuilding (Ibid, p. 357).

Negroes, however, were simply finding more jobs in occupations which had been traditionally open to them in an expanding economy. This enlarged employment and the concurrent reentrance of colored workers into service and other nondefense employment did not come to grips with the basic problem of minority group labor's participation in war production. That problem involved the opening of new occupations, new industries, and new plants to minorities in an economy which was changing its types of production and was requiring a larger proportion of trained workers.

On April 11, 1941, at the instruction of the Office of Production Management, Mr. Hillman addressed a letter to all holders of defense contracts requesting them to remove bans against the employment of qualified and competent Negro workers. On June 12, 1941, the President again gave official recognition to the problem, and, in a memorandum to Messrs. Knudsen and Hillman, placed the full support of his office behind the Hillman letter to defense contractors (Minorities in Defense, pp. 11-12). Despite these statements of policy and the activity on the part of Federal agencies to effect them, discriminatory patterns persisted. In recognition of this fact the President issued his Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941 (Ibid, pp. 12 and 16).

The efficacy of the President's Executive order and the Committee established to receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in violation of the provisions of that order are difficult to determine statistically. While it must be admitted that economic forces alone would have occasioned wider employment of minority groups, the color bars in war industries would have relaxed much more slowly than they have had it not been for the Executive order and the Committee it created. The remainder of this statement will concern itself with specific instances which illustrate the strategic importance of the Executive order and the Committee.

Following the issuance of Executive Order 8802 minority groups' participation in defense training increased appreciably. The rate of Negro registration in these courses tripled in the 18-month period from July 1941 to December 1942. In 1943 over 112,000 Negroes enrolled and completed war-production training and related courses.

(NOTE. Utilization of Reserve Workers, Recently Reported Placements of Negroes in Skilled Occupations, War Manpower Commission (Washington: 1944), p. 1.)

In the North and West, where there were nonsegregated schools, these developments reflected new employment opportunities for Negroes-job openings which were occasioned by local tight labor markets and the efforts of F. E. P. C., O. P. M., and W. M. C. to enforce Executive Order 8802. In the South and border States, where there are separate schools for Negroes, progress was delayed.

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(NOTE. "The South with roughly 80 percent of the Negro population was training 0.2 of 1 percent of that population or 20 percent of the total trainees Herman Branson, "The Training of Negroes for War Industries in World War II," Journal of Negro Education, Summer 1943, p. 377. There were also grave qualitative racial differentials in the separate schools. Ibid, p. 378.)

The wider participation of Negroes in war-training courses in the latter part of 1943 and subsequently was due primarily to the enforcement of the President's Executive order.

It is impossible to review the whole story of Negro employment in World War II in this statement. Suffice it to say here that nonwhite employment (of which about 97 percent is Negro) increased from about 3 percent in January 1942 to over 7 percent in the summer of 1944. The first really significant gains occurred after July 1942. Today ) there are over 1,000,000 nonwhite workers in war plants. Although the majority are concentrated in unskilled jobs, a sizable proportion are in semiskilled jobs and occupations calling for a single skill only. There are still many plants which do not employ Negroes; upgrading is often denied or limited to certain types of occupations, and in many areas Negro women are still discriminated against in war plants. As late as February 1943 the magazine Fortune was able to present the following findings, based upon a survey of 5,000 leading business executives. Less than 30 percent of the plants covered employed as much as 10 percent Negro labor, and over a third did not believe that Negroes could be efficiently used (Fortune Management Poll, Fortune, February 1943). I have attempted elsewhere to summarize the current situation:

From the point of view of establishing new racial patterns in employment, much progress has been made in the last 4 years; from the point of view of equality of opportunity without color distinction, much remains to be done ***. Today, when there is virtually full employment of Negroes in our industrial centers, the problem is one of securing in-plant training and upgrading for Negroes already in war plants, transferring trained men from less essential work, and expanding employment opportunities for Negro women in industrial employment (Weaver, The Employment of Negroes in United States War Industries, International Labour Review, August 1944, pp. 144).

In many ways aircraft typifies war production. It was a young industry; it was destined to expand at an unprecedented rate; it was largely dependent upon young and inexperienced workers; it planned to train its own labor supply. One large reservoir of potential labor was the Negro; yet, at the start of the defense effort, the industry did not even consider employing colored workers. On August 2, 1940, for example, the director of industrial relations at the Vultee Aircraft Co. in southern California informed a Negro organization that he regretted to say

That it is not the policy of this company to employ people other than the Caucasian race, consequently, we are not in a position to offer your people employment at this time (extract from a letter addressed by W. Gerald Tuttle to the National Negro Congress on August 2, 1940).

The magazine Fortune made an exhaustive survey of aircraft in 1941. It had this to say of racial employment patterns:

The industry also has its prejudices. You will find an almost universal prejudice against Negroes-and in the west-coast plants against Jews. This statement stands the test of observation; you almost never see Negroes in aircraft factories nor do you see Jews in the west-coast plants except in some engineering departments. There is little concealment about the anti-Negro policy (Half a Million Workers, Fortune, March 1941, pp. 98 and 163).

Various Government agencies concerned with labor supply attempted to secure relaxations, but they had made little progress until 1942. At that time, in response to growing labor demands in an increasingly tight market and more effective governmental machinery to secure nondiscriminatory employment practices, relaxations occurred. By the summer of 1944 there were over 90,000 nonwhite workers in aircraft.

There are many specific cases which illustrate the efficacy of the President's nondiscrimination order and the F. E. P. C. in breaking down color discrimination in aviation. The most obvious is the fact that, with the exception of a promise of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation to use Negro production workers in the spring of 1941, there was no tangible evidence of color relaxations in aircraft until after the issuance of Executive Order 8802.

At the Boeing Aircraft plant in Seattle, discrimination against Negroes, Latin-Americans, and other nonwhite groups continued long after certain other west coast plants had relaxed their color bars. Management excused its discriminatory employment policy on the basis of union opposition to Negroes. And Local No. 751 of the International Association of Machinists, which has a union membership maintenance contract, assumed this responsibility. Repeated negotiations with management and the union produced no results. It was not until F. E. P. C. cited the case to President Roosevelt, as a violation of Executive Order 8802, that relaxations were secured. As a result of this action, arrangements were made to issue work permits to nonwhite applicants, and they were finally accepted for training and employment. Today there are over 800 nonwhite employees in the Boeing plant; a large proportion of them are on production jobs.

Despite the earlier commitments from officials of the Wright Aeronautical Co., Negro employment at the Paterson, N. J., plant was delayed. O. P. M. did the preliminary work with this establishment, and after the issuance of Executive Order 8802, it was able to secure the acceptance of nonwhites in the training courses operated by the local public schools for Wright. (Prior to this action there had been discrimination against Italian-Americans, applicants of other European extraction, Jews and Negroes.) Even when training was opened, employment of minorities was extremely limited. F. E. P. C. cited the Wright plant and included it among the companies charged with violating Executive Order 8802 at its hearings in New York City. By the fall of 1942 there were 425 Negroes in the Wright plant; today there are 3,500 nonwhite workers, who constitute almost 9 percent of the total labor force.

When, in the summer of 1941, the new Buick Aviation plant in the Chicago area opened, it began to employ trainees and other workers. No Negro trainees were accepted, and few Jews were hired. O. P. M. referred the case to F. E. P. C., and it became the basis of the charges against the plant presented at the hearings of the committee in Chicago. Even after the hearings there was no appreciable change in the plant's racial employment patterns. In the summer of 1943 there were only about 350 Negroes on the pay roll and they were generally restricted to nonproduction jobs. F. E. P. C. and W. M. C. continued to press for fair employment practices; by the summer of 1944 Buick hired about 2,000 nonwhite workers in a variety of occupations.

Other cases of a similar nature, in which the President's Executive order and F. E. P. C. have been extremely effective in breaking down discriminatory employment patterns in aircraft plants could be cited. Although economic factors alone would have occasioned an increase in the amount of nonwhite employment in the industry, had it not been for Federal policy and machinery the extent of this participation would have been less. Without Executive Orders 8802 and 9346, the use of minority groups would have been delayed and there would have been a much more pronounced tendency to restrict them to traditional occupations. This latter development would have limited the numerical extent of nonwhites' utilization, since the bulk of jobs in aircraft are of the type in which it has not been traditional to employ Negroes and other colored groups.

In aircraft, as elsewhere, the existence of the non-discrimination Executive order has offered a basis upon which management has facilitated modifications in its discriminatory hiring practices. Lockheed-Vega Aircraft in California was one of the first companies in the industry to take forthright steps to secure the integration of Negro and other nonwhite workers. When, in August 1942, it was ready to act, the secretary of the two companies addressed a comprehensive memorandum to executives and supervisors and to Aeronautical Lodge No. 727 of the International Association of Machinists. The memorandum opened with these two paragraphs:

I am sending you herewith a copy of an Executive order issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which we propose to post on the bulletin boards for the information of all employees. Whole Lockheed-Vega Aircraft Corporation and Vega Airplane Co. have never had any discriminatory policies with regard to race, color, or creed, it is, nevertheless, a fact that no Negroes are now in the employ of either company.

After giving full consideration to this fact, the management of Lockheed and Vega have decided that, in line with their policy of cooperating fully with the Federal Government in the national defense program, special effort will be made immediately to comply with the request of the President and the Office of Production Management that "plans for their (Negroes') training and employment in capacities commensurate with their individual skills and aptitudes should be undertaken at once" (menorandum signed by Cyril Chappellet, secretary of the Lockheed-Vega Aircraft Corporation).

Now that victory is in sight, the Nation is turning its eyes toward post-war adjustments. Without full employment, or a close approximation thereto, there can be little hope of real employment opportunities for any group in the population. The occupational color caste system which exists in this country is such that patterns of exclusion of minority groups from certain types of work become established in a much shorter period of time than is required to institutionalize their acceptance in new types of jobs. Unless, therefore, we maintain minority groups' participation in a wide number of industries and occupations during the transition, patterns of exclusion for minorities will persist long after economic forces have created a situation favorable to their full utilization. If the gains which have been made during the war are temporarily wiped out in many areas, all of the delays and difficulties recently encountered will again present themselves. We shall have to go through the painful process of altering the occupational color caste system again.

If, on the other hand, we preserve minority group representation in a diversity of industries, firms, and occupations, it will be much easier to secure widespread acceptance of the continuation of similar patterns

in the peacetime economy. The transitional period is crucial. It is important, therefore, that Government, through its controls over the allocation of materials and labor, sees that fair employment practices are maintained during this period. Past experiences, sketched above, clearly show that there must be an independent agency operating under a mandate to accomplish this. (The basis for these conclusions is contained in the present writer's The Employment of Negroes in United States War Industries, op. cit., pp. 156-159.)

Fair employment in the post-war period may be more difficult to achieve than it was in 1942. Much depends upon the volume of production and employment. But, regardless of these developments, there will certainly be need for a Federal agency, qualified by experience and fortified with legislative authority, to translate into actuality the American ideal of equality of opportunity, regardless of race, creed, or color.

Senator CHAVEZ. That is a very nice statement, Mr. Weaver. I want to thank you very much.

Are there any questions, Senator Aiken?

Senator AIKEN. No.

Senator CHAVEZ. Mr. Ross.

STATEMENT OF MALCOLM ROSS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE

Senator CHAVEZ. Will you kindly state your name for the record? Mr. Ross. My name is Malcolm Ross. I am Chairman of the Fair Employment Practice Committee.

Senator CHAVEZ: Is that the committee that is carrying out Executive orders on fair employment practices?

Mr. Ross: It is, Senator.

Senator CHAVEZ: Do you desire to make a statement?
Mr. Ross: Yes.

Mr. Chairman, all who have lived close to this question of equal opportunity in industry for minority group Americans must feel, as I do, a deep satisfaction that your committee, distinguished for its devotion to the welfare of the working people of America, has set aside its time in these fast-moving days of war to consider the specialized problem of the barriers which prejudice and thoughtless practice have raised against your fellow citizens, simply because of their creed or color or national origin. I have followed the testimony of previous witnesses and I have been impressed by the fact that many millions of Americans, through their spokesmen, have expressed to you their resolve that the United States must not betray its destiny by permitting the bad habits of the past to divide us as a people during the flowering of the now foreseeable peace which our armed forces are winning for us on battlefields around the world.

I will not attempt to repeat or expand the testimony already offered you. The time is too short to consider the reasons why America, at this moment of its greatest crisis, should be plagued with racial and religious blind spots which disturb our clear view of where we are and where we are going. Yesterday's newspapers brought the statements of responsible officials that the approaching defeat of Germany will permit a 40-percent reduction in war-material production. We are also told to expect a 20-percent cut-back in aircraft production, a

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