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Before the EEOC: How Management Integrated the Workplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Jennifer Delton
Jennifer Delton
Affiliation:
JENNIFER DELTON is associate professor of history at Skidmore College.
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Abstract

This article examines how the human-relations managerial techniques of the 1950s prepared large companies for the mandated racial integration required by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after 1964. Drawing from management's “howto” publications, as well as archival materials from the Lukens Steel Company and the Du Pont Corporation, the article expands on recent work that has emphasized the importance of internal labor markets, training programs, and managerial policies in determining the shape and pace of integration.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , Summer 2007 , pp. 269 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2007

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References

1 For the positive effects of antidiscrimination law, see Wright, Gavin, “The Civil Rights Revolution as Economic History,” Journal of Economic History 59 (June 1999): 267–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, James P. and Welch, Finis R., “Black Economic Progress after Myrdal,” Journal of Economic Literature 27 (June 1989): 519–64Google Scholar.

2 Wright, 276; Minchin, Timothy, Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-80 (Chapel Hill, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 In some instances, workplace integration was accompanied by violence, as Nancy MacLean and others have shown. However, it never approached the level that business owners feared it would, nor did it ever approach the frequency and intensity of the violence that occurred with unionization or, even, school integration. See MacLean, Nancy, Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (New York, 2006)Google ScholarPubMed.

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7 See Gardner, Burleigh, “The Factory as Social System,” in Industry and Society, ed. Whyte, William Foote (New York, 1946), 4–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid., 2.

9 Bell, “Adjusting Men to Machines,” Commentary 3 (Jan. 1947): 79-88, p. 80.

10 Whyte, ed., Industry and Society, v-vi. See also Jacoby, Modern Manors, 222-23.

11 See Baritz, The Servants of Power, for conspiracy theory, and Whyte, William Foote, Participant Observer: An Autobiography (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 145Google Scholar, for a contrary view.

12 See for instance, Hughes, Everett Cherrington, “The Knitting of Racial Groups in Industry,” American Sociological Review 11 (Oct. 1946): 512–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and CHRI, “General Research Program,” 11 July 1946, in the President's Papers, 1950-1955, University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center. Gardner, who became heavily involved in consulting, nonetheless remained an expert on race relations into the 1960s. For evidence of the influence of this school of race relations, see the bibliography of the essay by John A. Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes in War Industries,” New York State War Council, Committee on Discrimination in Employment, 1942.

13 Union demands and new labor laws also contributed to these developments. See Dobbin et al., 401-2; Dobbin and Sutton, 444; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 44-46.

14 For the underlying philosophy and empirical basis of “community relations” programs, see Warner, W. Lloyd and Low, J. O., The Social System of the Modern Factory (New Haven, 1947)Google Scholar; or Warner and Low, “The Factory in the Community,” in Whyte, ed., Industry and Society, 21-45 (the condensed version of the findings later published in their book, cited above). See also General Electric's account of its community-relations program, “Beyond Our Walls: A Program for Interpreting GE to the Community,” prepared by the Plant Community Relations Services Department, Feb. 1955.

15 Whyte, William H. Jr, The Organization Man (Philadephia, 2006), 9.Google Scholar Originally published in 1956.

16 See especially Bell, “Adjusting Men to Machines,” and Mills, White Collar.

17 Bell, “Adjusting Men to Machines.” This model of equilibrium also underlay their understanding of race relations—the caste theory—which was uniformly criticized for accepting the status quo in race relations.

18 See, for instance, Smith, Robert Michael, “From Blackjacks to Briefcases: Commercial Anti-Union Agencies, 1865-1985” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toledo, 1989)Google Scholar; and Jacoby, Modern Manors, 130-44.

19 Employee Relations Department, Annual Report, 1955, 6, in Du Pont Human Resources, series I, box 1, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del.

20 Breen, William, “Social Science and State Policy in World War II: Human Relations, Pedagogy, and Industrial Training, 1940-1945,” Business History Review 76 (Summer 2002): 233–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chapin, F. Stuart, “Social Obstacles to the Acceptance of Existing Social Science Knowledge,” Social Forces 26 (Oct. 1947): 7–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Executives often rose from line positions. In many businesses, a major fault line existed between line workers and more educated, younger staff workers who manned the employee-relations and public-relations offices, for instance, and who were greatly resented by line workers precisely for their ideas about human relations. See Dalton, Melville, “Conflicts between Staff and Line Managerial Officers,” American Sociological Review 15 (June 1950): 342–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York, 1977, 1984)Google Scholar also explores this division. I thank Pamela W. Laird for pointing me to Dalton and Kanter.

22 See, for instance, Whyte, Participant Observer.

23 See Armstrong Association of Philadelphia, 1918-23, in Lukens Steel Company papers, box 1988, at the Hagley Museum and Library.

24 On the wartime FEPC, see Reed, Merl, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement: The President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941-1946 (Baton Rouge, 1991)Google Scholar; Ruchames, Louis, Race, Jobs, and Politics: The Story of the FEPC (New York, 1953)Google Scholar; Kryder, Daniel, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; and Ross, Malcolm, All Manner of Men (New York, 1948)Google Scholar.

25 On labor unions’ long history of exclusion, see most recently Moreno, Paul, Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History (Baton Rouge, 2006)Google Scholar.

26 See Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar.

27 Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 149, 229.

28 “Racial and Cultural Democracy: Summary of Class Proceedings, 1943-44,” May 15 meeting, box 5, Department of Political Science papers, University of Minnesota Archives, Minneapolis.

29 Gardner, Burleigh and Moore, David, Human Relations in Industry (Chicago, 1945; rev. ed., 1950), 310–11Google Scholar.

30 Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes,” 23. See also American Management Association, “The Negro Worker,” 1942, which was apparently the AMA's first research publication.

31 Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes,” 42-43. Davis also draws from the research of leading black sociologists E. Franklin Frazier and Charles S. Johnson, who were Robert Park's students and colleagues of Allison Davis, Burleigh Gardner, and W. Lloyd Warner at the University of Chicago. All these men, including Dollard, held to the “caste theory” school of race relations, which was criticized at the time and later discredited for its apparent assumption of stasis and equilibrium in white supremacy. See Cox, Oliver, “The Modern Caste School of Race Relations,” Social Forces 21 (Dec. 1942): 218–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brooks, Maxwell, “American Class and Caste: An Appraisal,” Social Forces 25 (Dec. 1946): 207–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Davis also cites the human-relations classic by F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker: Technical vs. Social Organization in an Industrial Plant (1939), to support his points about the importance of group dynamics; see Davis, 22.

32 Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes,” 8.

33 Ibid., 17-18.

34 Dalton, “Conflicts Between Staff and Line Managerial Officers.” See also Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, 167.

35 Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes,” 17.

36 Hughes, Everett Cherrington, “The Knitting of Racial Groups in Industry,” American Sociological Review 11 (Oct. 1946): 512–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Davis, “How Management Can Integrate Negroes,” 24.

38 See especially Ross, All Manner of Men; Cecil Newman, “An Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” Opportunity (Spring 1944): 52-56; Southall, Sara, Industry's Unfinished Business: Achieving Sound Industrial Relations and Fair Employment (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; and John A. Davis, “Negro Employment: A Progress Report,” Fortune (July 1952): 102-3, 158, 161-62. On the effectiveness of the wartime FEPC, see Collins, William J., “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets,” American Economic Review 91 (Mar. 2001): 272–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Moreno, Paul, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933-72 (Baton Rouge, 1997)Google Scholar.

40 On the ineffectiveness of state FEPCs, see Sovern, Michael, Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment (New York, 1966)Google Scholar. On their effectiveness, see Collins, William J., “The Labor Market Impact of Anti-Discrimination Laws, 1940-1960,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 56 (Jan. 2003): 244–72Google Scholar.

41 Sovern, Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination, 49.

42 Ginzberg, Eli, The Negro Potential (New York, 1956), 42.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., 117.

44 On corporate responsibility and civil rights during these years, see Sewell, Stacy Kinlock, “The Best Man for the Job: Corporate Responsibility in the Workplace, 1945-1960,” Historian 65, no. 3 (2003): 1125–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The following draws from Gourlay, Jack, The Negro Salaried Worker (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; and Habbe, Stephen, Company Experience with Negro Employment (New York, 1966), 2 vols.Google Scholar See also “Hiring Negro Workers” and “Recruiting Negro Graduates” in Conference Board Record, June 1964 and August 1964, respectively.

46 Habbe, Company Experience with Negro Employment, preface, by H. Bruce Palmer.

47 Habbe, Company Experience, 124.

48 In the 1960s, about 4.7 percent of Du Pont employees were represented by national unions, 59 percent by independent unions, and 36 percent were unrepresented. See Employee Relations Department Annual Reports in series 1, box 1, Du Pont Human Resources papers.

49 Habbe, Company Experience, 29.

50 Ibid., 28.

51 “Affirmative action” at this time did not mean “quotas” or racially selective hiring, but rather that employers were taking active steps—such as recruitment, training opportunities, contacting the local Urban League—to change the color of their workforces. Ibid., 16-17, 28-29; Gourlay, The Negro Salaried Worker, 14-15.

52 Habbe, Company Experience, 32-38.

53 Laird, Pamela Walker, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin (Cambridge, Mass., 2006)Google Scholar.

54 On the history of personnel offices, see Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy.

55 Maloney, “Personnel Policy,” 238-39.

56 At least in nonunionized companies. Unionized companies negotiated compensation deals for laid-off workers, while nonunionized companies were more likely to retrain workers and place them in another position. Jacoby, Modern Manors, 43-44.

57 Mahoney, “Personnel Policy,” 240.

58 Gourlay, The Negro Salaried Worker, 77-78; see also the example of the Colgate-Palmolive Company in Habbe, Company Experience, 111.

59 Habbe, Company Experience, 39-44; Gourlay, writing on behalf of the AMA, suggested that the word “qualified” was subjective and hence open to redefinition. Gourlay, The Negro Salaried Worker, 12. On Du Pont's reassessment of testing, see Habbe, Company Experience, 28; and Employee Relations Department, Reports to the Executive Committee, 1965, 7, in box 1, Du Pont Human Resources papers. See also “Report on the Workshop Panels, Regional Conference on Equal Opportunity and Economic Growth, 10 June 1964,” 4. These are Vice President J. Stewart Huston's notes on the conference, as found in box 2018, Lukens Steel Company papers.

60 Department of Industrial Relations, Annual Report, 1964, section entitled “Plan for Progress,” 3, box 2163, Lukens Steel Company Papers.

61 Breen, “Social Science and State Policy in World War II.” For a contemporary puff piece on the program, see Chase, Stuart, “Educating the Boss: The Job Relations Program of the TWI,” Men at Work: Some Democratic Methods for the Power Age (New York, 1941, 1945), ch. 4.Google Scholar

62 Chase, “Educating the Boss,” 40.

63 Ibid., 47.

64 See Du Pont, Employee Relations Department, Annual Report, 1956.

65 Lukens Steel Company's training department, for instance, handled the HOBSO program, which indoctrinated workers into the virtues of both human relations and the freeenterprise system. See “HOBSO file” in box 2020, Lukens Steel Company papers. So too at Du Pont, where the Employee Relations Department instituted HOBSO at the first company-wide conference of training supervisors. See Employee Relations Annual Report, 1952, in Du Pont Human Resources, series 1, box 1. See also Harris, Howell, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison, 1982)Google Scholar.

66 See, for instance, consultant J. M. Manley Jr.'s proposal for a “basic development plan” based on an outline titled “Luken's Steel Co., Management Indoctrination Program for Shop Supervisors.” J. M. Manley Jr. to Lukens Steel Company, 4 Mar. 1953, box 2020, Lukens Steel Company papers.

67 See, for example, International Harvester's experiences with integrating its southern plants in 1949 in NPA Committee of the South, Selected Studies of the Negro Employment in the South: Three Southern Plants of International Harvester Company (Washington D.C., 1953), 85–87.Google Scholar

68 “Minutes of the Industrial Relations Managers Conference, French Lick, Indiana, 8-12, Nov. 1948,” in McCormack International Harvester Papers, Mcc Mss 6z M2001-125, box 7, folder 25,17-18, at Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

69 Lukens Steel Company, “Fundamentals of Human Relations,” in box 2020, Lukens Steel Company papers.

70 NPA Committee of the South, Selected Studies of the Negro Employment in the South, 87.

71 Lukens Steel Company, Industrial Relations Department Annual Report, 1965, 4, in box 2163, Lukens Steel Company papers. See also Habbe, Company Experience, ch. 9.

72 See Stewart Huston to Charles Lukens Huston, 18 June 1968, reporting on a conference panel he attended on jobs, training, and housing. Box 2020, Lukens Steel Company papers.

73 Habbe, Company Experience, 42.

74 Clearly the lesson about the capital “N” for Negro had yet to be learned. Department of Industrial Relations, Annual Report, 1964, section entitled “Plan for Progress,” 4, in box 2163, Lukens Steel Company papers.

75 Gourlay, The Negro Salaried Worker, 14.

76 Habbe, Company Experience, unnumbered introductory pages; and Gourlay, The Negro Salaried Worker, 7-8.

77 See Industrial Relations Department Annual Report, 1964 and 1965, section entitled “Plan for Progress,” box 2163, Lukens Steel Company papers.

78 Industrial Relations Department Annual Report, 1966, section entitled “Plan for Progress,” box 2163, Lukens Steel Company papers.

79 Employee Relations Department Annual Report, 1968, 7, Du Pont Human Resources papers.

80 See “recruitment” section in Department of Employee Relations Annual Reports in series 1, box 1, Du Pont Human Resources papers.

81 The black community targeted Du Pont because it did not intervene to prevent the governor from imposing martial law in black neighborhoods in 1968.

82 C. B. McCoy to Mr. Morris, 5 Nov. 1969, box 19, Charles Brelsford McCoy papers, 1967-74, Hagley Museum and Library.

83 T. W. Stephenson to management heads, 18 Apr. 1969, box 12, Charles Brelsford McCoy papers, 1967-74.

84 John Oliver to J. A. Dallas, 11 Dec. 1970, box 12, Charles Brelsford McCoy papers, 1967-74.

85 John Oliver, “Social Responsibility,” 7 Jan. 1970, box 12, Charles Brelsford McCoy papers, 1967-74.

86 See for instance, MacLean, Nancy, Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (New York, 2006)Google ScholarPubMed; Minchin, Hiring the Black Worker; and Anderson, Terry H., The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.