TODAY IN HISTORY

|Franklin D. Roosevelt Signs Executive Order Banning Racial Discrimination in the Employment of Workers|

Workers, many of them migrants from Africa, grading beans at a canning plant in Florida during the Great Depression in 1937.

Source: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Arthur Rothstein (neg. no. LC-USF34-005788-D)

    Seventy-nine years ago, on this day, June 25, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an Executive Order, which banned racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defence industries and government agencies. The Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) was established to help enforce this order. Furthermore, as wartime labour needs opened employment opportunities for blacks in positions previously reserved for whites, African Americans championed the idea that their children deserved much better schooling than they were getting in local segregated schools. However, racial segregation would continue in American schools until 1954 when the United States Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools as unconstitutional.