AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
...loyers holding defense contracts. It also set up a fair employment practice commissions to investigate charges of racial discrimination. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower continued to enforce fair employment legislation after Roosevelt’s policies because Congress was unwilling to do so. In 1954, the supreme court decision Brown v. Board of Education pressured both houses of Congress and the executive office to take some positive steps on behalf of civil rights. In January 1961, John F. Kennedy took office. Almost immediately Roy Wilkins of the NAACP called for action to promote employment opportunities for African Americans. John F. Kennedy responded with executive order 10925, which created a presidential commission on equal employment opportunity; it also mandated federal contractors to take “Affirmative Action” to ensure that there would be no discrimination by “race, creed, color or nationality.” This was not the first time that the government ordered it own contractors not only to avoid discrimination, but to take positive steps to redress the effects of discrimination in society. In some cases contractors were asked to pay employees doing similar work, the same amount of pay. Without congressional action an executive order could only last so long, and in 1963 Kennedy secured passage of the Equal Pay Act. The Equal Pay Act prohibited employers from paying women less than men for the same work. “A short time later due to the assassination of kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson called for the passage of the Civil Rights Bill as a memorial to the late president kennedy. Lyndon B. Johnson skillfully guided and expanded versions of kennedy’s proposal through the house and senate. The Civil Rights Act was signed into law July 2, 1964. Title VII of the act banned employment discrimination based on “race, color, sex, and nationality,” it also created a permanent equal employment opportunity commission to enforce its provisions. The act also for the first time included obligations not to discriminate to private employees, labor unions, and governmental agencies.(Urofsky 17). In executive order 11246, issued on September 24, 1965, Johnson require that federal contractors take affirmative action to recruit, hire, and promote more minorities. Two years later in executive order 11375 Johnson added women to the group covered by previous anti- discrimination order” (Urofsky17). Each new order was a modification of the previous one. Increasing minorities’ and women’s chances to compete in the job market. When Richard Nixon took office in 1969, he asked Art Fletcher, the Assistant Secretary of Labor and a black man himself, to find a way to enforce the hiring provisions of Title VII in a way that it would withstand court challenge. Fletcher did, and in 1971 Nixon unveiled the Philadelphia Plan. The Philadelphia Plan made federal contractors meet specific numerical goals in hiring minorities. Each contractor was to have nine percent of its work force be made up of minorities and women. Even with all these Executive Orders, Civil Rights Act, and Amendments passed, only a small percent of minorities held position in the job force. In recent years, in order to combat job discrimination in the employment market, the federal government has issued a series of executive orders and have established government funded firms to secure equal opportunity in the work force. Affirmative action and other executive orders were created to insert qualified minorities in the job market, but in recent years it has been used to deter job discrimination from happening. Yet society’s viewpoint on Affirmative Action has been a way for the federal government to favor one class of people over another. The fact is, that in order to use Affirmative Action to favor minorities and women against “white males” in the workplace, jobs must first be integrated with both minorities and whites. For no one can separate apples and oranges if there are no apples! In the case of Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts (1984). The Memphis fire department was found in violation of Title VII and was under court order to hire and promote more blacks to make amends for past discrimination. Later, anticipating a budget deficit, the city planned to lay off public employees with the least seniority, and that action would have mostly affected recently hired black firemen. Stotts, a black fireman challenging the proposed personnel actions, received a favorable decision from the federal court, which granted an injunction enjoining the Fire Department from strictly adhering to seniority in layoffs. As a result, the union appealed to protect its se...