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Hotspots in a Cold War: The NAACP's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948–1964

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

Sophia Z. Lee
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Extract

June of 1955 was a busy month for the NAACP. Throughout the country, members and officials used direct action and a variety of legal tools to further the organization's fight against workplace discrimination. At the NAACP's annual convention, the organization reaffirmed that it “vigorously supports the purposes of organized labor.” But it also urged that “[w]here labor unions still practice any form of racial discrimination,” its members should “bring all the pressure they can against these undemocratic and discriminatory practices,” including using publicity, filing complaints with President Eisenhower's Committee on Government Contracts (PCGC), and, “wherever possible, by court action.” The audience hardly seemed to need this reminder.

Type
Forum: “Poking Holes in Balloons”: New Approaches to Cold War Civil Rights
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 2008 , pp. 327 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2008

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References

1. NAACP Annual Convention Resolutions, June 25, 1955, Boehm, Randolph, Meier, August, and Bracey, John H. Jr, eds., Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955 (Bethesda: University Publications of America [hereafter cited as UPA], 1987)Google Scholar, microfilm, reel 12. The PCGC was not a congressionally created agency but an executive body charged with implementing non-discrimination clauses in government contracts. I refer to both the PCGC and NLRB as agencies for simplicity's sake.

2. Executive Office Reports, June 13, 1955, ibid., reel 2; “NAACP Membership Unanimous on Yellow Cab Boycott,” June 6, 1955, press release,Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Part 13, Series A: Subject Files on Labor Conditions and Employment Discrimination (Bethesda: UPA, 1991)Google Scholar, microfilm, reel 11.

3. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)Google Scholar; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).Google ScholarThe Fourteenth Amendment limits state governments. By the mid-twentieth century, the Fifth Amendment incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantees, but against the federal government. This article uses the general term “constitutional” to refer to claims that sought to surmount these amendments' state-action barrier.

4. “NLRB Gets Specific Job Bias Charges,” June 1, 1955Google Scholar, press release,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 13Google Scholar; Herbert Hill to William Pollard and Woodrow Redo, June 7, 1955, ibid.; William Anderson and Richard Fulton to Hill, ibid., reel 11.

5. Hughes Tool, 147 NLRB 1573 (1964).Google ScholarShelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).Google ScholarThe 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other things, prohibited discrimination by employers, unions, and in public accommodations. Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 241 et seq. (1964). On Congress's view that only the Commerce Clause provided established legal authority for the Act, seeCarothers, Leslie A., The Public Accommodations Law of 1964: Arguments, Issues and Attitudes in a Legal Debate (Northampton, Mass: Smith College, 1968), 56–57Google Scholar; Loevy, Robert D., To End All Segregation: The Politics of the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 1990), 49–50.Google ScholarHughes Tool also appeared to put the Board out ahead of the attorney general. In the fall of 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy told the House Judiciary Committee that he did not think it would be unconstitutional for a state to license or otherwise sanction a business that discriminated. House Committee on the Judiciary, Civil Rights Act: Hearings on H.R. 7152, 88th sess., 1963, 269–2700. For the Supreme Court's divided views on the scope of Shelley's reach, compare Justice Douglas's concurrence and Black's, Justice dissent in Bell v. Maryland, 378Google ScholarU.S. 226, 257–59, 326–33 (1964), decided a little over a week before the Board's Hughes Tool decision.

6. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).Google ScholarGoluboff, Risa Lauren, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Goluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality Take Care of Itself’: The NAACP, Labor Litigation, and the Making of Civil Rights in the 1940s,” UCLA Law Review 52 (June 2005): 1395Google Scholar; Goluboff, , “The Thirteenth Amendment and the Lost Origins of Civil Rights,” Duke Law Journal 50 (2001): 1609CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mack, Kenneth W., “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering and Politics in the Era before Brown,” Yale Law Journal 115 (2005): 258Google Scholar.

7. Scholars who argue that the NAACP's labor litigation ended with the Cold War's onset include Goluboff, Lost Promise; Goluboff, “‘Let Economic Equality’”; Tushnet, Mark, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 70–80, 116.Google ScholarGoluboff's important work explores topics similar to this article's but comes to quite different conclusions. Goluboff argues that by the late 1940s NAACP lawyers had, for various reasons, chosen to forego employment related litigation and that by 1950 these cases had “disappeared” from its litigation agenda. In particular, she argues that they ceased seeking to extend the state-action doctrine to reach unions and workplaces.Goluboff, , Lost Promise, 12Google Scholar, ch. 8, especially 235; Goluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality,’” 1456–72, 1476–78.Google ScholarJack Greenberg argues that NAACP workplace civil rights litigation was born in the 1960s.Greenberg, , Crusaders in the Court: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 412–29.Google ScholarRecent works recognize that the NAACP continued to pursue economic rights in the 1950s. However, they do not address the NAACP's constitutional litigation.MacLean, Nancy, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), ch. 2Google ScholarPubMed; Moreno, Paul, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933–1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), chs. 5–7Google Scholar; Jonas, Gilbert, Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in America, 1909–1969 (New York: Routledge, 2005), ch. 9Google Scholar.

8. This contradicts labor historians' argument that rights-based legal action undermined worker collective action. See, for example,Lichtenstein, Nelson, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).Google ScholarSchiller, Reuel E. provides a more contingent account: “From Group Rights to Individual Liberties: Post-War Labor Law, Liberalism, and the Waning of Union Strength,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 10 (1999): 1.Google ScholarCivil rights labor histories also trouble this dichotomy.Korstad, Robert Rodgers, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough; Arnesen, Eric, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

9. Eschen, Penny Von, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Anderson, Carol, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Biondi, Martha, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Korstad, Robert and Lichtenstein, Nelson, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American History 75 (1988): 805, 808CrossRefGoogle Scholar(hereafter cited as JAH). On the Cold War's general deradicalization of civil rights, seeHall, Jacquelyn Dowd, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” JAH 91 (March 2005): 1248–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dudziak, Mary, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 13Google Scholar; Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008), ch. 9Google Scholar; Sugrue, Thomas J., The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 156.Google ScholarHowever, historians are beginning to recover exceptions to the Cold War's conservatizing effects on national and local civil rights advocates.Jackson, Thomas F., From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kutulas, Judy, The American Civil Liberties Union and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 1930–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

10. For the multiple factors that shut black workers out of jobs and unions, seeSugrue, , Origins of the Urban Crisis, 91–123.Google ScholarHistorians are beginning to recover the NAACP's postwar direct action against racially exclusive customs.Cohen, Lizabeth, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), ch. 4Google Scholar; Sugrue, Thomas, “Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the North, 1945–1969,” JAH (June, 2004): 145.Google ScholarBetter-known courtroom challenges to the state-action doctrine include the NAACP's white-primary, racially restrictive-covenant, and sit-in cases.Tushnet, , Making Civil Rights, 81–115Google Scholar; Greenberg, , Crusaders, chs. 20, 23Google Scholar.

11. The classic account of the road to Brown isKluger, Richard, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 1975).Google ScholarMark V. Tushnet emphasizes the ways in which this litigation was orchestrated according to the interests of the national NAACP office.Tushnet, , The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle ScholarRisa Goluboff argues that by the 1950s, the NAACP's campaign against Plessy and segregated education targeted only state-sanctioned discrimination, stigmatic, not material, harms, and pursued the single goal of ending formal racial classifications.Goluboff, , Lost Promise, 14–15, 228–35, 243–45, 251–52.Google ScholarShe also describes the school-segregation litigation as reflecting and being aided by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's (LDF) increasing separation from the political work of the NAACP. Ibid., 226.

12. Legal scholars who correct the way Brown's present-day meaning distorts civil rights historiography includeGoluboff, , Lost Promise, 4–5Google Scholar; Goluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality,’” 1396Google Scholar; Mack, “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering”; Siegel, Reva B., “Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in Constitutional Struggles over Brown,” Harvard Law Review 117 (2004): 1470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarRisa Goluboff and Kenneth Mack focus on the period preceding Brown. However, Reva Siegel has demonstrated that the meaning and sweep of Brown remained up for grabs for decades following the Court's landmark decision. This prolonged process indicates the value of extending Goluboff and Mack's work, demonstrating that the workplace reach of pre-Brown civil rights constitutionalism persisted in new forms and unexplored fora during and after the LDF's successful assault on Jim Crow laws.

13. Cases and Materials on Employment Discrimination, ed. al, Michael J. Zimmer et. (New York: Aspen Publishers, 2003)Google Scholar; Maclean, Freedom Is Not Enough; Minchin, Timothy, The Color of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stein, Judith, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).Google ScholarMoreno, From Direct Action, discusses postwar fair employmentstatutes but treats them as precursors to Title VII.Botson, Michael R., Jr's Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005),Google ScholarFrymer's, PaulBlack and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, especially ch. 5, andFrymer's, “Racism Revised: Courts, Labor Law, and the Institutional Construction of Racial Animus,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 373CrossRefGoogle Scholarare welcome exceptions.

14. The most comprehensive history of civil rights constitutionalism isKlarman's, Michael magisterial From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google ScholarWhile Klarman disputes court-centric accounts of civil rights change, arguing that courts followed rather than led the civil rights revolution, he looks only to the Supreme Court for constitutional law and separates his analyses of doctrine and politics. Goluboff incorporates the NAACP's wartime NLRB cases, but she is primarily interested in its court-based constitutional litigation. Goluboff also recognizes that the NAACP's Labor Department remained active on employment issues into the 1950s, but does not consider this part of the NAACP's civil rights constitutionalism or of LDF's agenda. In addition, while she highlights the previously overlooked work of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Section, in terms of non-governmental actors, she focuses exclusively on the litigation strategy of LDF and Thurgood Marshall.Goluboff, , Lost Promise, 226, 260Google Scholar; Goluboff, , “Let Economic Equality,” 1396Google Scholar, n 10; 1471; Goluboff, “The Thirteenth Amendment.” See also Tushnet, Making Civil Rights. Mack significantly challenges this methodological tradition, arguing that civil rights legal history must step outside LDF, the NAACP's national office, and the docket of the Supreme Court.Mack, , “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering,” 263–64.Google ScholarThis article attributes the labor advocacy it recounts to the NAACP generally. This best captures the cooperation these cases involved among the NAACP's Labor Department, National Legal Committee, LDF, and attorneys affiliated with its regional and local offices. After 1956, the NAACP's newly distinct General Counsel's office supplanted LDF's role in this litigation.

15. Kramer, Larry, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Whittington, Keith, Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Forbath, William E., “The New Deal Constitution in Exile,” Duke Law Journal 51 (2001): 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Post, Robert and Siegel, Reva B., “Legislative Constitutionalism and Section Five Power: Policentric Interpretation of the Family and Medical Leave Act,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2003): 1943CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Jonas, , Freedom's Sword, 240–53.Google Scholar

17. National Labor Relations Act § 1, ch. 395, 74 Stat. 450 (1935). For the NLRA's passage, seeGross, James A., Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Tomlins, Christopher L., The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 103–47.Google ScholarNew Deal economic regulation was hardly unprecedented. There was a long tradition of state, local, and, by the twentieth century, federal oversight of economic actors.Keller, Morton, Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Novak, William, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). However, the New Deal marked a sea-change in the scope and depth of economic regulation. For the scholarly debate on whether the NewGoogle ScholarDeal was a legal revolution, seeKalman, Laura, “Law, Politics, and the New Deal(s),” Yale Law Journal 108 (1999): 2165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. African Americans' decades-old labor activism accelerated in the 1930s, nurtured by Popular Front politics.Arnesen, , Brotherhoods of Color, 85–86Google Scholar; Denning, Michael, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1997)Google Scholar; Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Honey, Michael, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 67–144.Google ScholarWorld War II gave this activism a further boost. Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism; Korstad, and Lichtenstein, , “Opportunities Found and Lost,” 786Google Scholar; Nelson, Bruce, “Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality in Mobile during World War II,” JAH 80 (1993): 952.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPopular Front politics also affected civil rights lawyering.Goluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality,’” 1413–51Google Scholar; Mack, Kenneth W., “Law and Mass Politics in the Making of the Civil Rights Lawyer, 1931–1941,” JAH 93 (June 2006): 37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarHill, Herbert, Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 107Google Scholar.

19. Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U.S. 192 (1944).Google ScholarThe Court did not rule that the Constitution directly bound labor agencies or unions, instead reasoning that the labor statute would be unconstitutional unless it was interpreted to implicitly impose the duty of fair representation. Justice Frank Murphy, for one, was unsure of this duty's constitutional status. His concurrence noted that Congress could not authorize a union to ignore African-American workers' constitutional rights without violating the Fifth Amendment. “If the Court's construction of the statute rests upon this basis,” he wrote, “I agree. But I am not sure that such is the basis.” Steele, 208–9. SeeMalamud, Deborah C., “The Story of Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad: White Unions, Black Unions, and the Struggle for Racial Justice on the Rails,” in Labor Law Stories, ed. Cooper, Laura J. and Fisk, Catherine L. (New York: Foundation Press, 2005)Google Scholarfor a nuanced history of the case.Larus & Bro. Co., Inc., 62 NLRB 1075, 1082 (1945).Google ScholarBethlehem-Alameda Shipyard, Inc., 53 NLRB 999, 1015–16 (1943)Google Scholar; Carter Manufacturing Co., 59 NLRB 804 (1944)Google Scholar; Atlanta Oak Flooring Co., 62 NLRB 973 (1945)Google Scholar; General Motors Corp., 62 NLRB 427 (1945)Google Scholar; Larus, 1075.

20. Marian Wynn Perry to NLRB, January 30, 1948,Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Part 13, Series C: Legal Department Files on Labor (Bethesda: UPA, 1991)Google Scholar, microfilm, reel 7; Legal Department Report, February, 1948,Boehm, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Part 1: Meetings of the Board of Directors, Records of Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and Special Reports, 1909–1950 (Bethesda: UPA, 1982)Google Scholar, microfilm, reel 7; Perry to Thurgood Marshall, Sept. 17, 1948, in Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Part 13, Series A: Subject Files on Labor Conditions and Employment Discrimination (Bethesda: UPA, 1991)Google Scholar, microfilm, reel 14.

21. Raiding involves one union luring away the members of a competitor union. For examples of all-white unions' raids, see Perry to NLRB, January 30, 1948,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series C, reel 7Google Scholar; Perry, February 5, 1948, ibid.Zieger, Robert H., The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 253.Google ScholarTaft-Hartley Act, 61 Stat. 136 (1947). On the Taft-Hartley Act, see Gross, James A., Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947–1994 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Tomlins, The State and the Unions; Lichtenstein, Nelson, “Taft Hartley: A Slave-Labor Law?” Catholic University Law Review (Spring 1998): 763.Google ScholarOn the Southern Democrat-Republican alliance and its stranglehold on labor and civil rights policy, seeal, Ira Katznelson et., “Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (Summer 1993): 283.Google ScholarQuote is from Perry to Thurgood Marshall, Sept. 17, 1948,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 14.Google ScholarHastie, William H., “The Government's Responsibility for Civil Rights,” July 13, 1949, speech,Google ScholarBoehm, and Meier, , Part 1, reel 12Google Scholar; 43rd Annual Convention Resolutions, June 28, 1952,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , eds., Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 5Google Scholar; Goluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality,’” 1460–66.Google ScholarOn anti-communism and civil rights, see note 9 above andWoods, Jeff, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948–1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004).Google ScholarOn anti-communism and unions, seeLevenstein, Harvey, Communism, Anticommunism and the CIO (Westport: Greenwood, 1981)Google Scholar; Schrecker, Ellen, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998)Google Scholar.

22. Annual Convention Records, June 26, 1948,Boehm, and Meier, , Part 1, reel 12Google Scholar; Annual Convention Records, June 23, 1950, ibid.; Annual Convention Records, June 28, 1952,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 5.Google ScholarStatements that theNAACP was anti-union discrimination, not anti-union, include Clarence Mitchell, July 14, 1949,Boehm, and Meier, , Part 1, reel 12Google Scholar; Charles Hamilton Houston, July 14, 1949, ibid.; Walter White, June 1950, ibid. For the NAACP's shift from suspecting unions to embracing them, seeGoluboff, , “‘Let Economic Equality,’” 1404–7, 1467–71.Google ScholarMack argues that civil rights attorneys were already focused on the twin goals of fighting union discrimination and fostering cross-class alliances in the 1930s.Mack, , “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering.” Nelson, , Divided We Stand, 215Google Scholar; Hill, n.d.,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20.Google ScholarLucille Black to White, March 31, 1949, ibid. Hill's union campaign raised over $11,600 in its first eight months. Hill to Gloster Current, Sept. 23, 1949, ibid.; Hill, Nov. 1949, ibid. This was over four times Hill's annual salary. Roy Wilkins to Mrs. Waring, April 14, 1949, ibid. Quote from Herbert Hill to Wilkins, ibid. See generally,Jonas, , Freedom's Sword, 236–38Google Scholar.

23. For union disfavor of legal action, seeNelson, , Divided We Stand, 122, 125.Google ScholarFor representative NAACP resolutions, see Annual Convention Records, June 23, 1950,Boehm, and Meier, , Part 1, reel 12Google Scholar; Annual Convention Records, June 27, 1953,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 6Google Scholar; Annual Convention Records, June 26, 1956,Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960 (Bethesda: UPA, 1991),Google Scholarmicrofilm, reel 4. Quotes are from the text of a 1954 workshop on legal strategies for combating employment discrimination. Unauthored, n.d. [1954], manuscript, “Oil Workers” Folder, box 8, part III-J, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as NAACP Records) (year of undated sources derived from the procedural posture of cited cases). For George Weaver's work for the CIO and how his and other CIO officers' anti-communism shaped and constrained the CIO's civil rights efforts, seeMarshall, Stevenson F. Jr, “Challenging the Roadblocks to Equality: Race Relations and Civil Rights in the CIO, 1935–1956” (unpublished manuscript, 1991)Google Scholarhttp://eric.ed.gov (May 21, 2007). On the devastating effects the CIO's leftist expulsions had on African-American labor, seeHorne, Gerald, Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica (New York: New York University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism. The NAACP, by supporting and even assisting in these purges, also bears responsibility for this damage.Frymer, , Black and Blue, 62–63.Google ScholarFor the elaborate steps NAACP attorneys took to work problems out within non-Communist unions prior to pursuing court action, see U. Simpson Tate to Hill, December 11, 1953, “Labor Cases—Texas, 1953–55” Folder, box 346, part II-A, NAACP Records.

24. “Work of the National Office,” April 16, 1946Google Scholar, Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Part 18: Special Subjects, 1940–1955, Series A: Legal Department Files (Bethesda: UPA, 1994),Google Scholarmicrofilm, reel 7; Unauthored, n.d. [1954], manuscript, “Oil Workers” Folder, box 8, part III-J, NAACP Records.

25. Executive Orders 9980, 9981 (1948); Executive Order 10308 (1951); White, Nov.1951,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar; White, March 1951, ibid.; Hill to Henry Moon, October 22, 1952, Part 13, Series A, reel 19; Executive Office Reports, May 12, 1952, ibid.Moreno, , From Direct Action, 178–79Google Scholar.

26. Larus, 1082; Atlanta Oak, 975. For instance, the Board ordered an election for a union that excluded African-American workers from membership inWitchita Falls Foundry & Machine Co., 69 NLRB 458 (1946).Google ScholarGeneral Motors, 431 (1945)Google Scholar; Waterfront Employers Ass'n of the Pacific Coast, 71 NLRB 121, note 7 (1946)Google Scholar.

27. Taft-Hartley Act, 61 Stat. 136 (1947), sec. 8; Frymer, , Black and Blue, 29–30Google Scholar.

28. Plywood-Plastics Corp., 85 NLRB 265, 265 (1949).Google ScholarSee alsoNorfolk Southern Bus Corp., 76 NLRB 488, 489 (1948)Google Scholar; Texas & Pacific Motor Transport Corp., 77 NLRB 87, 89 (1948).Google ScholarVeneer Products, Inc., 81 NLRB 492 (1949)Google Scholar; Plywood-Plastics; Mitchell, Clarence, July 14, 1949Google Scholar, Boehm, and Meier, , Part 1, reel 12Google Scholar.

29. Hill to Current, October 21, 1949,Bracey, and Meier, Part 13, Series A, reel 20Google Scholar; “Mass Rally,” October 26, 1949Google Scholar, ibid.; Hill to Current, February 2, 1951, ibid. Jack Greenberg to Josephine Peters, June 19, 1950, ibid. Hill to A. Maceo Smith, February 2, 1953, ibid.

30. Hill to Smith, ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Legal Department Report, February–March 1953,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar; Legal Department Report, May 1953, ibid.; Legal Department Report, June 1–15 1953, ibid.; Marshall and Robert L. Carter to Lawyers' Conference Participants, memo, June 12, 1953, ibid., reel 7; unauthored, n.d. [1954–1955], manuscript, “Oil Workers Background Information, 1954, n.d.” Folder, box J-8, part III, NAACP Records.Carter, Robert L., A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights (New York: The New Press, 2005).Google ScholarRisa Goluboff notes that the NAACP and LDF increased their organizational separation in 1952, a move she argues further contributed to LDF and the NAACP's abandonment of workplace litigation and the NAACP's relegation of economic inequality to its political advocacy. Lost Promises, 226, 237. LDF's research and workshops on employment discrimination in 1953 suggest its separation from the NAACP did not end its interest in these claims. Furthermore, LDF attorneys and the NAACP political staff's concerted and coordinated efforts to translate these theories into action demonstrate thatLDF's move also did not rend the NAACP's political and legal pursuits.

33. Report of the Committee on Discrimination in Employment, n.d. [1953], manuscript, “Oil Workers Background Information, 1954, n.d.” Folder, box 8, part III-J, NAACP Records; Introduction, n.d. [1953], ibid.; unauthored, n.d. [1954–1955], manuscript, ibid.

34. Report of the Committee on Discrimination in Employment, n.d. [1953], manuscript, ibid.; Introduction, n.d. [1953], ibid.; unauthored, n.d. [1954–1955], manuscript, ibid. For the central role the Constitution played in duty-of-fair-representation claims and reasoning during this period, see Sophia Z. Lee, “‘Almost Revolutionary’: Race, Labor, and Administrative Constitutionalism, 1935–1964” (paper presented at the Yale Law Women Worksin-Progress Series, Yale Law School, April, 2005). The NAACP attorneys assembling these arguments seemed conflicted about the Constitution's role in the duty of fair representation. One document asserted that the duty was merely like a constitutional right while another argued that it was a constitutional right. Compare Report of the Committee on Discrimination in Employment, n.d. [1953], manuscript, “Oil Workers Background Information, 1954, n.d.” Folder, box 8, part III-J, NAACP Records with Introduction, n.d. [1953], ibid.

35. See discussion of the NAACP and CIO's efforts to have unions' discriminatory membership practices and Board certification of such unions declared unconstitutional above at note 20. Williams v. Yellow Cab Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., 200 F.2d 302 (3rd Cir., 1953); Introduction, n.d. [1953], “Oil Workers Background Information, 1954, n.d.” Folder, box 8, part III-J, NAACP Records;Brotherhood of R.R. Trainmen v. Howard, 343 U.S. 768 (1952)Google Scholar.

36. Unauthored, n.d. [1954–1955], manuscript, “Oil Workers Background Information, 1954, n.d.” Folder, box 8, part III-J, NAACP Records; Report of the Committee on Discrimination in Employment, n.d. [1953], manuscript, ibid.

37. Annual Report of Branch Activities, April 19, 1954, “Houston, TX, 1954” Folder, box 195, part II-C, NAACP Records (typographical errors corrected).

38. “Major Trade Unions,” Annual Convention Records, June 18, 1953, ibid., reel 8; Patrick E. Gorman, Annual Convention Records, June 25, 1953, ibid.; Charles C. Webber, Annual Convention Records, June, 1953, ibid.; Annual Convention Resolutions, June 27, 1953, Boehm, Meier, and Bracey, ibid., reel 6. On the NAACP's anti-communism during the 1950s, seeJonas, , Freedom's Sword, ch. 5Google Scholar.

39. Hill to White, Oct. 6, 1953,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20Google Scholar.

40. Holt v. Oil Workers International Union, No. 430–707, complaint, District Court, Harris County, Texas (January 12, 1954), 4. Risa Goluboff has noted that substantive due process claims, like this one by King, persisted long after the New Deal supposedly interred them.Goluboff, Risa L., “Deaths Greatly Exaggerated,” Law and History Review 24 (Spring 2006): 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goluboff, , Lost Promise, 24, 206, 207, 266–67Google Scholar.

41. George L. P. Weaver to Carter, March 5, 1954,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series C, reel 4.Google ScholarCarter to Weaver, March 23, 1954, “Labor: Holt et al. v. Oil Workers International Union, 1954” Folder, box 89, part II-B, NAACP Records.

42. Syres v. Oil Workers International Union, Local 23, May 25, 1954Google Scholar, Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series C, reel 4.Google ScholarOral histories suggest that Brown may have made interracial organizing more difficult but also inspired legal action to integrate jobs.Honey, Michael, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 136, 150–54Google Scholar; Huntley, Horace and Montgomery, David, eds., Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 19.Google ScholarThis fits Michael Klarman's thesis about the decision's impact.Klarman, , From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, 377, 381Google Scholar.

43. Legal Department Report, April, 1954, Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2; Elizabeth to Hill, June 25, 1954,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20.Google ScholarHill to Leonard P. Avery, July 13, 1954, “Labor Cases: Oil Industries, 1945–55” Folder, box 345, part II-A, NAACP Records; see also Hill to U. Simpson Tate, July 12, 1954,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 13Google Scholar.

44. Daniel E. Byrd to Carter, n.d., “PCGC, Complaint to, 1954–55” Folder, box 9, part III-J, NAACP Records.

45. Herbert Hill to Roy Wilkins, September 15, 1954, memo, Part 13, Series A, reel 20. Oil Workers International Union, January 13, 1955, motion and brief, “Syres v. Oil WorkersInt'l Union, Local 23, 1955” Folder, box 2337, part V, NAACP Records.

46. Hill to White, Sept. 3, 1954,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 13Google Scholar; Hill to Wilkins, Sept. 14, 1954, ibid., reel 20; Hill to Lawrence H. Conley, Oct. 19, 1954, ibid., reel 13; Hill to Carter, Nov. 17, 1954, ibid.; Executive Office Reports, December 13, 1954,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar; Hill to Moon, February 1, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20Google Scholar; Hill to Wilkins et al., March 2, 1955, ibid., reel 13; Executive Office Reports, April 11, 1955,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar.

47. Hill to White, Sept. 3, 1954, Part 13, Series A, reel 13. The PCGC charges addressed discrimination at Esso Standard Oil Corp., Carbide and Chemical Co., Lion Oil Co., and Cities Service Refining Corp. Carter and Marshall, n.d. [1955], complaint, “PCGC, Complaint to, 1954–55” Folder, box 9, part III-J, NAACP Records; LDF, June 1, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20Google Scholar; Legal Department Report, June–Aug., 1955,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2.Google ScholarUnfortunately no copies of the NLRB petitions appear to exist either in the NAACP's papers at the Library of Congress or in the NLRB's papers at the National Archives. The substance of the legal claims is derived from the NAACP's statements, its prior NLRB petitions, and the legal theories it developed in advance of its claims.

48. Carter and Marshall, n.d. [1955], complaint, “PCGC, Complaint to, 1954–55” Folder, box 9, part III-J, NAACP Records; LDF, June 1, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 20Google Scholar; Legal Department Report, June–Aug., 1955,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar.

49. Legal Department Report, June–Aug., 1955, ibid.; Executive Office Reports, Oct. 10, 1955, ibid.; Syres v. Oil Workers Intern. Union, Local No. 23, 223 F.2d 739 (5th Cir., 1955) (Rives, J., dissenting); Legal Department Report, June–Aug., 1955,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar.

50. William Anderson and Richard J. Fulton to Hill, June 25, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 11Google Scholar.

51. Hill to Lt. Spinella, June 29, 1955, ibid.; Hill to Pope & Talbot, Inc., June 29, 1955, ibid.; Fulton to Hill, July 1, 1955, ibid.; Anderson and Fulton to Hill, July 11, 1955, ibid.

52. Fulton to Hill, July 17, 1955, ibid.; Hill to Franklin H. Williams, July 28, 1955, ibid.

53. The Seafarers was founded in 1938. It incorporated the International Seamen's Union and the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, whose collective history of nativism and racial exclusionstretched back into the nineteenth century.Nelson, Bruce, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 49, 241.Google ScholarLabor Secretary Report, March 1, 1947,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 9Google Scholar; Legal Department Report, May 1951,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 2Google Scholar; Executive Office Reports, July–Aug. 1951, ibid.

54. Pacific Maritime Ass'n, 110 NLRB 1647 (1954). Branches were required to notify the state conference before bringing legal action. Annual Convention Records, June 27, 1953,Boehm, , Meier, , and Bracey, , Supplement to Part 1, 1951–1955, reel 6.Google ScholarThe San Francisco branch ignored this policy. Williams to White et al., January 31, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 11Google Scholar.

55. Williams to Ed Turner, Nov. 24, 1954, ibid.; Williams to White et al., January 31, 1955, ibid. “NAACP Not Supporting ILWU in Union Dispute,” January 14, 1955, ibid.; Williams to White et al., January 31, 1955, ibid.; “NAACP Charges Misrepresentation by ILWU and AF of L in Election Dispute,” February 7, 1955, ibid.; Williams to White et al., February 8, 1955, ibid.; Williams to Wilkins, February 11, 1955, ibid.; “NAACP Issues Policy Statement in ILWU and AF of L Election Controversy,” February 13, 1955, ibid.

56. Pacific Maritime, 1648. The NLRB twice ruled that it would have decertified a union but refrained in both instances due to extenuating circumstances. Larus; Hughes Tool, 104 NLRB 318 (1953). Williams to White et al., January 31, 1955, Part 13, Series A, reel 11. NLRB v. Pacific Ship. Ass'n, 218 F.2d 913 (9th Cir., 1955).

57. Pacific Ship. Ass'n, 915–16, citing Shelley; Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 (1948). Hurd extended Shelley's non-enforcement prohibition to federal courts.

58. Lester P. Bailey to Hill, Aug. 2, 1955,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 13, Series A, reel 11Google Scholar; Hill to Moon, Aug. 3, 1955, ibid.; Bailey to Hill, Aug. 1, 1955, ibid.; Bailey to Hill, Aug. 4, 1955, ibid.

59. Holt v. Oil Workers International Union, No. 430–707, judgment, District Court, Harris County, Texas (September 22, 1955), 8; Byrd to Carter, August 17, 1955, “PCGC, Complaint to, 1954–55” Folder, box 9, part III-J, NAACP Records.

60. Syres v. Oil Workers International Union, Local No. 23, 350 U.S. 892 (1955); Powers, Edward W., “LMRA: Duty of Certified Union to Represent Bargaining Unit Fairly,” Michigan Law Review 54 (February 1956): 567, 570CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. On the AFL-CIO merger and the CIO's negotiation of an anti-discrimination guarantee, seeGoldberg, Arthur J., AFL-CIO, Labor United (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1956)Google Scholar; Zieger, , The CIO, 360–64.Google ScholarLegal Department Report, March 1956,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 1Google Scholar.

62. Hill to Warner Brown, March 12, 1956,Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 13: The NAACP and Labor (Bethesda: UPA, 1997),Google Scholarmicrofilm, reel 12; Hill to E. D. Sprott, March 21, 1956, ibid.; Hill to Florence Irving, June 12, 1956, ibid.; Muriel S. Outlaw to Moon, April 9, 1956, ibid.; Executive Office Reports, May 14, 1956,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 1.Google ScholarThe Oil Workers' name had recently changed to the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union. I continue to use “Oil Workers” for simplicity's sake. Like the Shell Oil workers, other African-American workers combined legal action with direct action.Pittsburgh Courier (March 8, 1952),Google Scholarn.p.; Cornelius Simmons to Hill, May 18, 1959,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 1.Google ScholarHill to Boris Shishkin, May 7, 1956, Supplement to Part 13, reel 12.

63. Hill to Shishkin, December 4, 1958,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 12.Google ScholarCarter to Richard Nixon, June 5, 1957, “Labor: PCGC, 1956–58” Folder, box 190, part III-A, NAACP Records; “New Policy for Bias Unit ‘Badly Needed’—Wilkins,” November 21, 1957, press release, ibid.; Hill to A. Philip Randolph, January 9, 1958, ibid.; Wilkins to Nixon, April 2, 1958, ibid.; “President's Bias Committee to Report on Pending Cases,” press release, April 24, 1958, ibid. An example of Hill's letters to local branches involved in the oil litigation is Hill to C. B. Rainey, April 17, 1958, “El Dorado, AK, 1956–58” Folder, box 3, part III-C, NAACP Records; Jacob Seidenberg to Carter, October 21, 1958, “Labor: PCGC, 1956–58” Folder, box 190, part III-A, NAACP Records; Margaret Garrity to Carter, August 18, 1960, “Labor: PCGC, 1959–62” Folder, box 190, part III-A, NAACP Records. For the mixed success of the oil workers' litigation, seeMarshall, Ray, “Some Factors Influencing the Upgrading of Negroes in the Southern Petroleum Refining Industry,” Social Forces (December 1963): 186Google Scholar.

64. Hill to Joseph Houchins, September 2, 1959, “Labor: PCGC, 1959–62” Folder, box 190, part III-A, NAACP Records. Timothy Thurber's look at the PCGC, while uncovering its staff's desire to be more effective, which included trying less individualized approaches to discrimination, largely confirms the NAACP's view that the PCGC won few tangible changes in employment practices.Thurber, Timothy M., “Racial Liberalism, Affirmative Action, and the Troubled History of the President's Committee on Government Contracts,” Journal of Policy History 18 (2006): 446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. Tushnet, , Making Civil Rights, 310Google Scholar; Woods, , Black Struggle, especially ch. 2Google Scholar; Lewis, George, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945–1965 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004).Google ScholarOn southern states' restrictions on the NAACP and their effect on the organization's work in those states, seeMeier, August and Bracey, John H. Jr, “The NAACP as a Reform Movement, 1909–1965: ‘To Reach the Conscience of America,’” Journal of Southern History 59 (February 1993): 3, 25Google Scholar; C. V. Adair to Current, September 2, 1957, “Houston, TX” Folder, box 149, part III-C, NAACP Records; Viola Scott to NAACP, November 5, 1957, “El Dorado, AK, 1956–58” Folder, box 3, ibid.; Conley to Wilkins, May 2, 1957, “Lake Charles, LA, 1956–65” Folder, box 53, ibid.

66. Herbert Hill, January 5, 1959,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 2Google Scholar; Raskin, A.H., “NAACP Accuses Labor of Bias Lag,” New York Times (January 5, 1959), 29Google Scholar(hereafter cited as NYT).“Joint Statement of NAACP Executive Secretary and AFL-CIO President,” March 20, 1959Google Scholar, Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 1Google Scholar; Executive Office Reports, April 13, 1959,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 2Google Scholar.

67. A. Philip Randolph, July 15, 1959,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 10.Google ScholarAfrican-American unionists were divided on separate versus interracial union-ization. See Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color; Nelson, Divided We Stand. This issue often put all-black locals in conflict with integrationist national labor and civil rights leadership. See Executive Office Reports, Sept. 9, 1957,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 1.Google ScholarWilkins to Meany, May 25, 1960,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 1Google Scholar;Meany to Wilkins, May 27, 1960, ibid.; NYT (May 25, 1960): C10.

68. “Randolph Hails NAACP Role in Fighting Labor Union Bias,” June 26, 1960Google Scholar, Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1956–1960, reel 12Google Scholar; Annual Convention Records, June 23, 1960, ibid.; Wilkins to Members of Board, June, 1960, ibid. In a closed shop, the employer agrees to only hire union members. Here, a closed union is one that excludes African Americans from membership. A closed union that negotiates a closed shop effectively shuts black workers out of that employer's workplace. The Taft-Hartley Act banned closed shops but allowed workers to choose a union shop, which requires all new hires to join the union. On the NAACP's tactic of blending public pressure on the labor movement with continued alliance, seeMeier, and Bracey, , “NAACP,” 28Google Scholar.

69. Hill, , “Racism within Organized Labor: A Report of Five Years of the AFL-CIO, 1955–1960,” January 3, 1961,Google ScholarBracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 7Google Scholar.

70. “NAACP in Legal Attack,” October 16, 1962,Google ScholarBracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 11Google Scholar.

71. James C. Dixon v. Seafarers International Union, draft NLRB petition, October 1962,Google ScholarBracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 11Google Scholar; Hughes Tool Company, NLRB case no. 23-RC-1758, Oct. 24, 1962, ibid.

72. Sovern, Michael, “The National Labor Relations Act and Discrimination,” Columbia Law Review 62 (1962): 563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Lawyers' Conference,” March 2–4, 1962Google Scholar, schedule,ed. Bracey, and Meier, , Papers of the NAACP, Part 22: Legal Department Administrative Files, 1956–1965 (Bethesda: UPA, 1997),Google Scholarmicrofilm, reel 19.

73. James C. Dixon v. Seafarers International Union, draft NLRB petition, Oct. 1962,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 11Google Scholar; Hughes Tool Company, NLRB case no. 23-RC-1758, Oct. 24, 1962, ibid. For another NLRB action and the strains it put on theNAACP's relationship with organized labor, seeNelson, Bruce, “‘The CIO Meant One Thing for the Whites and Another Thing For Us’: Steelworkers and Civil Rights, 1936–1974,” in Southern Labor in Transition, ed. Zeiger, Robert H. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997).Google ScholarOn automation's decimation of African Americans' industrial employment, seeSugrue, , Origins of the Urban Crisis, 143–52Google Scholar.

74. “NAACP in Legal Attack,” October 16, 1962,Google ScholarBracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 11Google Scholar.

75. Miranda Fuel, 140 NLRB 181 (1962)Google Scholar; Pioneer Bus Co. v. Transport Workers Union of America, 140 NLRB 54, 55, n3 (1962),Google Scholarciting Brown, 349 U.S. 294; Bailey v. Patterson, 369 U.S. 31 (1962)Google Scholar; Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960)Google Scholar; Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961)Google Scholar.

76. Wilkins, Annual Meeting, remarks, January 7, 1963,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1961–1965, reel 2Google Scholar.

77. Office of the White House Press Secretary,“The White House Special Message on Civil Rights,” February 28, 1963Google Scholar, Congresslink: The Dirksen Congressional Center, www. congresslink.org/civil/cr1.html (June 2, 2007).

78. Hughes Tool, 1593–1608. For a rich case study of the Hughes Tool litigation and, especially, the decades-long interplay of local labor and civil rights activism that led up to it, see Batson, Labor.

79. Hughes Tool, 1593–1608;“NLRB General Counsel Authorizes Unfair Labor Practice Complaint,” August 20, 1962Google Scholar, press release, folder 1, box 2309, part V, NAACP Records; L.A. Ashley to Carter, September 23, 1962, ibid.; Carter and Maria Marcus to NLRB, complaint, ibid.; Carter to Wilkins et al., February 28, 1963,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 5Google Scholar.

80. NYT (March 1, 1963), 5.Google ScholarHughes Tool, 1593–1608 (1964)Google Scholar.

81. Carter to Wilkins et al., February 28, 1963,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 5Google Scholar; Carter to Columbus Henry and Ivory Davis, February 28, 1963,Bracey, and Meier, , eds., Papers of the NAACP, Part 23, Legal Department Case Files, 1956–1965, Series A: The South (Bethesda: UPA, 1997),Google Scholarmicrofilm, reel 41.

82. Exceptions to Trial Examiner's Report, April 4, 1963, ibid.; Charging Party's Brief in Support of Trial Examiner's Report, April 25, 1963, ibid.; Department of Justice, amicus brief, June 24, 1963, ibid.; American Civil Liberties Union, amicus brief, July 12, 1963, ibid.; United Auto Workers, amicus brief, Oct. 11, 1963, ibid.“Equality is Their Right,” NYT (August 29, 1963), 23Google Scholar; NYT (August 30, 1963), 12Google Scholar.

83. Despite his support for the NAACP's NLRB litigation and his appointment of Jenkins to the Board, historians have deemed President Kennedy's commitment to civil rights equivocal and his eventual support expedient. For a recent account, seeBryant, Nick, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2006).Google ScholarFor concerns that a Board decision would derail national fair employment legislation, see unsigned to Will [Maslow], February 29, 1964, ibid. For debates about its implications for the labor movement, see Carter to Henry, Nov. 8, 1963, ibid.

84. Henry to Carter, Oct. 28, 1963,Bracey, and Meier, , Part 23, Series A, reel 41Google Scholar; Carter to Henry, Nov. 8, 1963, ibid.

85. Carter to Robert Kennedy, December 2, 1963, ibid.; Carter to NLRB, December 2, 1963, ibid.; Ogden W. Fields to Carter, December 5, 1963, ibid.

86. Carter to NLRB, June 4, 1964, ibid.

87. Hughes Tool, 1574. Hughes Tool was decided on July 1, 1964, but publicly released on July 2.

88. Hughes, 1577–78, citing Brown, Bolling, Shelley, and Hurd.

89. NYT (July 3, 1964), 1.

90. Galveston Maritime Assn., Inc., 148 NLRB 897, 898 (1964); Rubber Workers (AFL-CIO) Local 12 (Business League of Gadsden), 150 NLRB 312, 314–15 (1964), affirmed in Local Union No. 12 v. NLRB, 368 F.2d 12 (5th Cir., 1965).Farmers' Cooperative Compress, 169 NLRB 290 (1968)Google Scholartargeted an employer. See alsoUnited Packinghouse, Food and Allied Workers' Union v. NLRB, 416 F.2d 1126 (9th Cir., 1969).Google ScholarCarter to Branch Presidents, Aug. 13, 1964,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 13, reel 11.Google ScholarBoard of Directors Meeting, Sept. 14, 1964,Bracey, and Meier, , Supplement to Part 1, 1961–1965, reel 1Google Scholar; Annual Meeting, January 4, 1965, ibid., reel 2.Bekins Moving and Storage, Inc., 211 NLRB 138 (1974)Google Scholar; Handy Andy, 228 NLRB 447 (1977)Google Scholar; Bell & Howell Co. v. NLRB, 598 F.2d 136 (D.C. Ct. App., 1979)Google Scholar.

91. Hill, , Black Labor, 95.Google ScholarRight-to-work claims included First Amendment freedom of association claims and due process liberty claims. See, for example,Reid v. McDonnell Douglas Corp. 443 F.2d 408 (Okl. Ct. App., 1971).Google ScholarFor an example of employers' race discrimination claims, see Bekins.

92. Goluboff, Lost Promise; Goluboff, “‘Let Economic Equality’”; Goluboff, “The Thirteenth Amendment”; Mack, “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering”; Mack, “Law and Mass Politics.”