Right now. It signed for the way Black History Fact in today's way Black History Fact is sponsored by Major Threads for innovative fashionable sportswear Checkmajor threats dot com. And we're going to talk about when discrimination became illegal in the military. All right, This is from history dot Com. One June twenty fifth, nineteen forty one. With World War Two heating up in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an Executive Order eighty eight oh two prohibiting ethnic and
racial discrimination in the country's growing defense industry. The order, issued after adamant protests by African American leaders, marked the US government's first move to ban employment discrimination and promote equal opportunity, and its first presidential directive on race since the period of reconstruction after the Civil War. Three years into the war in Europe, US factories making military aircraft, munitions, uniforms, and other supplies for the Allied powers were starting to
lift the country out of the Great Depression. In this time, segregation and harsh gym crow laws. Many of these factories and defense contractors refused to hire African Americans, many of whom had left the Southern States during the Great Migration
and headed north looking for work. Longtime civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, head of the country's largest black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, formed a march on Washington to bring thousands of African Americans to the Lincoln Memorial to protest discrimination. Other African American organizations joined the effort and planned to bring one hundred thousand people to the
march set for July first, nineteen forty one. In tense efforts by the Roosevelt administration to get the leaders to call off the march failed, as Randolph and other early civil rights leaders stood firm in their demands that Roosevelt issued an executive order to end employment discrimination in the defense industry and in government. Roosevelt ultimately acquiesced and signed the order a week before the march was to take place. It was just five months before Japanese warplans attack Pearl
Harbor and the US officially entered the war. Making the case to indiscrimination. The order's preamble states that, quote the democrat way of life within the nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within his borders unquote. The order established the fair employment Practice Committee to educate the industry on anti discrimination requirements
and investigate the alleged violations. But Randolph and other critics said its small size and budget left it in a proverbial left it a proverbial sorry, left it a proverbial David fighting the goliath of the massive defense contracting bureaucracy. He threatened again to march on Washington to fix this.
In May nineteen forty three, Roosevelt strengthened the FEPC in Executive Order ninety three forty six by making it more independent, authorizing twelve regional offices and staff, expanding its jurisdiction to all federal government departments and agencies, and requiring that all
government contracts have a mandatory non discrimination clause. Hundreds of discrimination complaints were filed with the newly expanded agency and defense industry hubs like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco. The FEPC. He did not end racial discrimination and employment during World War Two, but it opened more doors for African Americans to enter occupations and industries previously close to them.
So I'm promising better paying jobs. After the war, it doubled the number of workers in the defensive industry from three to eight percent, and tripled the number of black workers in the federal workforce. Despite efforts by President Harry Truman and others to establish a permanent FEPC, Congress cut off its funding in July nineteen forty five. The agency formally dissolved in nineteen forty six. Truman ended segregation in the armed forces with Executive Order ninety nine eighty one
in nineteen forty eight. The government would move to prohibit employment discrimination again years later, with the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title seven of the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act. Go mob to brother a Philip Randolph. I like when you talk like that, I just got to shout my brothers out every time. And yeah, still up here, where here, we