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65 Chapter 3 Grasping at Solutions, 1964–1967 It is no mere coincidence to say that there are fewer than 300 licensed [black] journeyman electricians in the entire country. —Otis E. Finley, NUL associate director, November 4, 1961 In 1962 James Ballard, a “twenty-two-year-old Negro Air Force veteran,” applied for an apprenticeship at the office of Sheet Metal Workers Local #28 in New York City. He was dutifully asked to complete an apprenticeship application form. Then he was shown a stack of papers and told “he would just have to wait his turn.” This was irregular; the sheet metal workers had never followed a first-come, first-served policy but typically ranked applicants based on less objective criteria. Ballard was also advised that in order to qualify, he would have to pass a “General Aptitude Test Battery conducted by the New York State Department of Labor.” Such tests had rarely been used before; clearly Ballard was being put through a more rigorous application regimen than usual to discourage him from entering the program. Even though Ballard passed the test with flying colors (and received the highest recommendation possible from the Labor Department for “jobs in sheet metal at the trainee or apprentice level”), Local #28 did not allow him to enter the next apprenticeship class, and the Joint Apprenticeship Committee concurred. Who was admitted? Only white youths, of whom “more than 90 per cent . . . were sons or nephews of members of Local 28.” Ballard faced the same injustice experienced by Thomas Bailey (see chapter 1) and countless other African Americans who had attempted to break the racial glass ceiling separating the better-paying skilled construction trades from the less-skilled trowel trades.1 In his congressional testimony advocating fair employment practices legislation, NUL associate director Otis Finley listed the employment 66 Constructing Affirmative Action problems faced by blacks and pointed in particular to the discriminatory practices of the building trades unions. “One has only to observe the virtual absence of skilled Negro workers on building projects in every major city,” he noted, “to realize that some forces are operative to prevent their employment in the building and construction trades.” Finley went on to say that “there are fewer than 300 licensed [black] journeyman electricians [and] fewer than 300 licensed [black] journeyman plumbers in the entire country. . . . Since apprentices often are brothers, sons, and relatives of union members, this places further limitations upon Negroes because of the few represented in some unions. Such discrimination,” Finley said, constitutes “a serious threat to our free society.”2 Discrimination in apprenticeships in the building trades was one of the most visible ways blacks continued to be excluded from the benefits of a booming economy during the 1960s. Apprenticeships in the skilled building trades were especially prized, as they often produced future foremen, contractors, and union leaders. And as the federal government increased domestic spending on urban renewal, model cities, and the rest of President Johnson’s numerous antipoverty programs, the lack of skilled blacks working at construction sites in the nation’s cities represented an affront to all the James Ballards—to every young black man who had been turned away from a job because of the color of his skin or, just as insidiously, because of the dearth of quality educational opportunities available in the inner city. As long, hot summer followed long, hot summer, the young black unemployed collectively constituted a tinderbox that exploded with worsening violence. Besieged on the “Negro problem” from both sides of the political spectrum, the Johnson administration looked to the PCEEO and the Department of Labor (DOL) for solutions. What they developed was a local-based approach that would differ from city to city and succeed or fail based on local conditions and the relative skills and talents of the federal officers—midlevel bureaucrats—in charge of implementing each program. These federal officials were motivated by a belief in the inherent importance of racial equality, the ethos known as Great Society liberalism. But the failure to conciliate—to push the unions and contractors to change on their own—would lead to more dramatic actions. Chapter 1 shows how mainstream civil rights organizations and labor leaders forced the federal government to push its contractors from racial exclusivity to tokenism. Chapter 2 shows how local civil rights leaders and rank-and-file supporters took to the streets to demand change, forcing the Kennedy administration to demand equal employment legislation. [18.191...

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