[Civil Rights]: [Employment Discrimination]: [Chavez, Dennis]:

S. 2048. In the Senate of the United States... A Bill to Prohibit Discrimination in Employment Because of Race, Creed, Color, National Origin, or Ancestry... [caption title].

Washington DC: 1944. 16pp. Gathered signatures, stapled. Minor creasing, light discoloration to outer leaves. Pencil note on last page reads, "From Natl Council for a Permanent FEPC Wash DC." Very good. Item #5698

A rare slip-bill printing of Senator Dennis Chavez's first attempt at legislation intended "to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry." New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez (1888-1962) was a lawyer and only the second Mexican-American to serve in the United States Senate. The present document represents a critical moment in Chavez's career in the Senate, which occurred near the end of World War II. Chavez saw the need to protect fair employment practices for minorities returning home from war or for those who had worked in the defense industry during the conflict. FDR's Executive Orders 8802, which forbid discrimination in hiring practices within the defense industry, and 9346, which created a five-member Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to ensure fairness helped during the war, but were only a temporary fix. During its three-year run, Senator Chavez reported hundreds of cases of discrimination to the FEPC with regard to unfair hiring practices, wage differentials, and discrimination in public accommodations, but he wanted a more permanent and broader-ranging solution.

The present document is Senator Chavez's first shot across the bow. In it, he proposes to end employment discrimination across the whole of American life through the establishment of a permanent Federal Employment Practices Commission. In addition to defining the composition and other details of the commission (membership, salaries, reporting duties, location of offices, etc.), the bill stipulates that the commission's chief duty is the "Prohibition of Unfair Employment Practices," defines the commission's investigative powers, gives it authority to make or change regulations to align with this act, requires non-discriminatory language in government contracts, stipulates penalties for persons resisting, impeding, or interfering with the commission's work, and so forth. Of course, Chavez's bill did not pass into law in 1944. Through a series of procedural gymnastics, including a Senate filibuster, opponents killed the bill a few different times in the years to come. When Chavez finally withdrew his bill following a failed cloture vote in February 1946, he commented that it was only the beginning of the struggle for civil rights, and that the country would indeed move forward.

In his article entitled, "Dennis Chavez and the National Agenda: 1933-1946," Roy Lujan concludes: "Chavez's failure in civil rights legislation may be attributed to the fact that his vision and goals were too far-reaching. In the mid 1940s, the United States was not ready to accept civil rights. Many people throughout the country and some of his Senate colleagues could not or would not recognize or correct discriminatory practices. Nevertheless, through Chavez's fight for civil rights legislation, he challenged southerners longstanding control of the Senate on this issue. Chavez's strong commitment to fight racial intolerance laid the groundwork and encouraged and inspired other congressmen to introduce civil rights legislation, which finally came to pass under the Lyndon Johnson administration. In 1964, twenty years after Chavez first introduced his bill to create a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, Congress invoked cloture to cut off debate after a fifty-seven-day southern-run filibuster and then enacted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A provision of that act prohibits employers and labor unions from discriminating because of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin."

Sadly, Chavez died in 1962, and thus did not live to see many of the ideas in the present document passed into law as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The present document defines what could have been...twenty years earlier.

Roy Lujan: "Dennis Chavez and the National Agenda: 1933-1946," New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (1999), pp.55-74.

Price: $1,250