Affirmative Action

What does affirmative action mean to you? A random survey showed fifty percent think of race, the civil rights movement and the sixties, when asked about affirmative action. The other fifty percent think of the 90's, gender, sports and Title IX. It seems to depend on the respondents age.

The random survey was inspired by Salem History which has two 'decades' books in the History database - the Forties and the Sixties. The section in the Sixties  on Affirmative Action begins :

The term “affirmative action” first appeared in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which required employers to engage in affirmative action, that is, to voluntarily rehire those who had been fired because they were union members and, in the future, to hire without regard to union membership rather than awaiting lawsuits to enforce the law.

The chapter goes on and refers to "1941 and 1943, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Orders 8802 and 9346, which mandated nondiscrimination by defense contractors, African Americans were hired in record numbers by contracting corporations in a voluntary effort to demonstrate compliance."

Salem History notes sources for this chapter -

For a history of the earliest uses of affirmative action, see Frank W. Andritzky and Joseph G. Andritzky’s “Affirmative Action: The Original Meaning,” Lincoln Law Review (1987), and William B. Gould’s Black Workers in White Unions (1977). Criticisms of affirmative action are expressed in Nathan Glazer’s Affirmative Discrimination (1975) and Stephen L. Carter’s Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (1991). A pro-affirmative action view is presented in Gertrude Ezorsky’s Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action (1991) and Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier’s “The Future of Affirmative Action: Reclaiming the Innovative Ideal,” California Law Review (1996).

Based on the resources used, I wonder if the union issues had to do with African Americans? I hunted around GALILEO searching in WestLaw, Legal Collection, ProQuest, &  Ebsco for Affirmative Action: The Original Meaning. The 1987 reference is too old for the databases we have access to. A search in Google Scholar noted more sources that have cited the 1987 article. A search in World Cat for the Lincoln Law Review revealed I could request a copy of the article through inter-library loan.


Wandering around looking for answers to my own questions can be entertaining.

-kss