‘Save the FEPC’ - 1945
A flyer by the D.C. branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Washington, D.C. Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) urges attendance at a rally June 23, 1945 to save the World War II Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
Funding was scheduled to lapse for the FEPC June 30th and the appropriation was facing stiff opposition from southern congressional representatives and senators.
A filibuster was staged and the issue was resolved in Congress to appropriate funds for the termination of the FEPC by June 30, 1946.
The Evening Star reported 2,500 attended the June 22rd rally in the Auditorium at 19th and C Streets NW where they heard Walter White, secretary of the national NAACP, call for an “avalanche” of telegrams to senators and representatives.
After hearing from a dozen speakers, the crowd filled out telegram forms provided by the Washington Industrial Council, CIO.
The FEPC, already severely weakened by an inability to enforce its orders to desegregate war-related industry, would go out of existence a year later. It wouldn’t be until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that spurred the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act creating the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission that the federal government gained a means to enforce desegregation.
For a PDF of this 8 ½ x 11, one-sided flyer, see washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1945-0...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk78TL6c
Original held in the Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia Community Museum, Henry Preston Whitehead Collection.
‘Save the FEPC’ - 1945
A flyer by the D.C. branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Washington, D.C. Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) urges attendance at a rally June 23, 1945 to save the World War II Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
Funding was scheduled to lapse for the FEPC June 30th and the appropriation was facing stiff opposition from southern congressional representatives and senators.
A filibuster was staged and the issue was resolved in Congress to appropriate funds for the termination of the FEPC by June 30, 1946.
The Evening Star reported 2,500 attended the June 22rd rally in the Auditorium at 19th and C Streets NW where they heard Walter White, secretary of the national NAACP, call for an “avalanche” of telegrams to senators and representatives.
After hearing from a dozen speakers, the crowd filled out telegram forms provided by the Washington Industrial Council, CIO.
The FEPC, already severely weakened by an inability to enforce its orders to desegregate war-related industry, would go out of existence a year later. It wouldn’t be until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that spurred the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act creating the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission that the federal government gained a means to enforce desegregation.
For a PDF of this 8 ½ x 11, one-sided flyer, see washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1945-0...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk78TL6c
Original held in the Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia Community Museum, Henry Preston Whitehead Collection.