Discrimination in Employment

Report Outline
Anti-Bias Legislation in New Congress
Movement for a Permanent F. E. P. C.
Extent of Postwar Job Discrimination
Success of State-Local Anti-Bias Laws
Special Focus

Anti-Bias Legislation in New Congress

Federal action to abolish discrimination in employment on account of race, religion or national origin is the most controversial point of President Truman's civil rights program. Legislation to carry out other principal points of that program may be accepted by the new Democratic Congress in compromise form, but fair employment practice legislation, in any form, will meet determined opposition from the southern wing of the President's party.

Southern senators have said they will not attempt to block action to abolish the poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in federal elections—if the legislation is offered in the form of a constitutional amendment, subject to ratification by the legislatures of the states. A federal anti-lynch bill might likewise escape a filibuster if states which have their own statutes for punishment of lynching were excepted from its operation. The House would probably give quick approval to any legislation in these fields which can be got through the Senate, for the House has passed anti-lynch bills twice and anti-poll tax bills three times in the past, under both Republican and Democratic control.

No fair employment practice bill has ever passed the House or the Senate and no compromise has been suggested from any quarter which would remove southern opposition to such legislation. In the Democratic 79th Congress an administration F.E.P.C. bill was filibustered to death in the Senate; in the Republican 80th Congress no attempt to get action on an F.E.P.C. bill was made in either house.