Lost Black History
By Don Valentine
Affirmative Action [AA] is a ubiquitous phrase that we all have heard. Not many of us know its origin or history. In order to grasp the entire scope of this equality tool you need to know its lineage. The foundation for this statute dates back to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, commonly known as the Wagner Act. It decreed that employers using discriminatory labor practices would be required “to take such Affirmative action including reinstatement of employees with or without back pay.”
The Wagner Act was the precursor to the language for subsequent Federal laws that fully codified efforts to address America’s racial disparity. In 1941, the country was on the cusp of the US entry into World War II. Black union activist (organizer of the Brotherhood of Colored Sleeping Car Porters) A. Philip Randolph led a nationwide effort protesting segregation in the armed forces and related industries. His planned march on Washington was expected to have upwards of 100,000 people at the Capitol. This forced President Roosevelt to issue an Executive Order which created the first Fair Employment Practices Committee. It mandated that defense contractors “provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination.” The “Great March on Washington” would come to fruition 1n 1963. Twenty years later the pursuit for the mythical unicorn of equality would spur the Kennedy administration to act. The “Lost Black History” is that it was not the beneficence of the Kennedy administration that was the architect of AA. It was a Black man, A. Philip Randolph. Credit should also go to a Black Texas attorney Hobart Taylor Jr, who at LBJ’s request redrafted the proposed law. Included in his last version were the infamous words “Affirmative Action.”
After the JFK assassination, President Johnson, in 1965 would sign President Executive Order 11246, “… prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin…” The interpretation would soon pass on to municipal, academic and the private sector. The language was clear that it protected a large swath of groups such as underrepresented minorities, women, people with disabilities etc.
The New York Times presented a provocative conservative summary of the AA resistance. The article said “Apart from stone-cold racists, everyone is happy, or claims to be happy, with affirmative action in the first sense. And many people are happy, or will say they are, with affirmative action in the second sense so far as the outcome is concerned. Legally, we want the system to be color-blind; we want everyone to have the same rights. But socially we understand that people don’t want their racial or gender identities to be ignored. People take civic pride in having a racially diverse workplace or educational institution. It’s just that many would rather not contemplate too closely the means used to achieve it.”
Lost stories like this are being removed from curriculums. It might be awkward but. all people have not been treated equally. Thanks to our Black press we will always have our history and not His-Story!
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