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

By the late 1960s, antidiscrimination policy aimed at labor markets in the United States consisted of two main branches. One branch, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was administered by an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with very limited powers. The other, government contract compliance policy established under Lyndon Johnson's Executive Order 11246 in 1965, generated persistent controversy through its association with the practice of "affirmative action" in recruitment, hiring, and promotion. Why did antidiscrimination policy take this shape? What other models were possible? These are the questions at the heart of Anthony S. Chen's provocative and engaging book, which traces the history of antidiscrimination policy from World War II through the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972. (His title refers to the "four freedoms" that President Roosevelt said the United States fought to protect during World War II: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. Freedom from discrimination is then the "fifth freedom.")

Chen focuses explicitly on the actions of elites—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, state Chambers, other business groups, and members of Congress and of state legislatures—because he is interested in the details of policy design, rather than the broad politics, of antidiscrimination law.He argues that Northern Democrats and their allies originally sought antidiscrimination policy that was modeled on the Fair Employment Practice Committee established during World War II. That is, they wanted a legislatively created agency with substantial powers to issue "cease-and-desist" orders and to enforce regulations in a manner resembling the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They began to pursue the creation of such an agency at the national level in the mid-1940s. Their way was blocked, however, by an alliance of Southern Democrats, who were rigidly opposed to Civil Rights, and Northern Republicans, who were concerned about extensions of government power and argued that legislation would be an ineffective tool against prejudice. The seniority of many Southern Democrats in Congress gave them access to important committee chairmanships, allowing them to block the movement of fair employment bills in the House, and the combination of Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans effectively blocked cloture votes in the Senate. As a result, national fair employment bills failed repeatedly in the 1940s and 1950s.

Stymied in Washington, advocates for fair employment laws turned their attention to the states, hoping to pass a sufficient number of laws at that level to persuade Congress to act. Their efforts met with an early success in New York State in the form of the Ives-Quinn bill, passed in 1945. There were obviously no Southern Democrats in the state legislature to block passage, though the battle as described by Chen was still hard fought. Following on New York's lead, New Jersey passed a similar law in 1945, as did Massachusetts in 1946 and Connecticut in 1947. Further progress was sporadic. By 1964, 25 states had passed fair employment practice bills, but nearly half of these were passed in 1959 or later.

As the momentum for new, national antidiscrimination legislation increased in the early 1960s, Republicans continued to do what they could to limit the scope of any such policy. Everett Dirksen of Illinois led Republican efforts in the Senate and succeeded in getting direct enforcement powers stripped out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in exchange for Republican support.

While the legislative path to fair employment remained limited, government contract compliance policy became more ambitious. Executive Order 11246, and its extensions under the "Philadelphia Plan" (1969) and "Revised Order #4" in 1970, brought this movement to full flower in the establishment of requirements that contractors document the demographic composition of their work force and establish goals and timetables for improving minority recruitment and employment. By...