The Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, to investigate discrimination in the national defense program on the basis of race, creed, color, and national origin. The exclusion of sex from the executive order, though it had been included in the federal government's antidiscrimination statement the previous year, helped to establish the pattern of viewing race and sex as competing categories. Despite the failure to include the issue of sex, however, approximately 30 percent of FEPC complaints were filed by women. In 1945 a hostile Congress dominated by southern Democrats terminated the committee's funding and it went out of existence the following year. During the Truman administration, liberal Democratic members of Congress pursued a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign for national fair employment practices legislation. Eight states established fair employment practices committees by 1950, though none of them covered discrimination on the basis of sex.
During the Kennedy administration liberal members of Congress resumed the campaign for what was now called equal employment opportunity legislation. In 1962 Representative James Roosevelt (D., Calif.), son of Franklin and Eleanor, introduced a pioneering comprehensive bill to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sex, race, religion, and national origin. But the Departments of Justice and Labor, as well as the NAACP, opposed the inclusion of women because they did not consider discrimination on the basis of sex to be as important. They also believed it would make passage and enforcement more difficult. The provision was omitted by the House Committee on Education and Labor. The Fair Employment principles were revived and extended to include sex in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in 1964 to enforce Title VII and remains the most important federal agency in the area of equal employment opportunity.
Helene Silverberg
See also
Civil Rights Act of 1964;
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC);
Title VII.
