The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (review)

As Karl Marx famously observed, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." Anthony Chen's excellent book succinctly illustrates this reality through a careful historical analysis of the struggle surrounding The Fifth Freedom. In this case the fifth freedom refers to freedom from employment discrimination, one of the central demands of Civil Rights struggles in the United States.

Chen's main thesis is that is that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the court-based affirmative action program that arose in the late 1960s and early 70s did not have its origins in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but was, in fact, forged in battles at the state and national level years earlier. In an ironic twist, Chen reveals it was a block of powerful elites, including conservative Republicans, Southern Democrats and business interests that pushed for a federal response to employment discrimination so abhorred by many of these same groups today. Relying on an often staggering amount of evidence, Chen constructs a rich historical narrative of political conflict at both the state and national level that eventually produced an often unwieldy and unworkable system of anti-discrimination safeguards.

Long before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title VII, which outlawed employment discrimination, liberal groups had been fighting for a strong federal response to this problem. Their goal, quite simply, was the establishment of a federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, an agency similar to the National Labor Relations Board, that would possess the enforcement power necessary to prosecute cases of job-related discrimination. As Chen documents, the growing political power of blacks and President Truman's commitment to Civil Rights gave supporters of this cause considerable reason to be optimistic following WW II.

Yet liberals were never quite able to overcome the obstacles they faced in Congress. As Chen shows, the reactionary stance of Southern Democrats, and the power that they wielded in Congress time and again was often sufficient to block Fair Employment Practices legislation. Realizing that the federal route was proving untenable, these groups turned to the states, with varying results. Through a careful account of the political struggles of liberal groups in New York and other states, Chen reveals that despite support from a number of progressive Republicans, the emergence of a group of conservative Republicans and their business allies was a powerful force against strong equal employment measures introduced in state legislatures around the country. These politicians hailed from white rural or suburban districts with constituents who either did not care or were strongly opposed to policies that they believed would give an unfair advantage to blacks and other minorities. Unlike their Dixiecrat allies, however, these Republicans and the business interests they represented were quick to denounce discrimination in all forms. Yet, as Chen shows, in instances when FEP was poised to pass Congress or was moving through state legislatures, opponents drew upon a number of powerful frames as justification for opposing it. These included the negative effects such legislation would have on the business community, the growing integration of the workforce, and the claim that discrimination was a problem of character, and therefore could not be eradicated by legislation. In cases when FEP did pass, these politicians sought to remove any enforcement teeth, arguing that voluntary compliance and education was the surest path to an integrated workplace.

While Chen is careful to note that Republicans were often split over the issue of FEP, his analysis of conservative opposition to this legislation does raise a broader point regarding the GOP's shift from the "Party of Lincoln" to Nixon's use of racial fear to attract white working class voters. Such transformation does not happen overnight, and while it is not a central focus of the book, Chen does describe how the struggle for equal employment gradually devolved into a Democrat vs...