American Tobacco Sued for Job Discrimination

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- Press Releases
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- LDF
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- c5e00264-b892-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 5. American Tobacco Sued for Job Discrimination, 1968. c5e00264-b892-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/0428e821-5636-40c7-8d74-e6b4bdd6d74a/american-tobacco-sued-for-job-discrimination. Accessed December 04, 2025.

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    +S President 

Hon. Francis E. Rivers 
PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel 

egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public Relations 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Jesse DeVore, Jr. 

10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

FOR RELEASE 
THURSDAY 
JANUARY 4, 1968 

AMERICAN TOBACCO SUED 
FOR JOB DISCRIMINATION 

Firm Produces Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Tareyton 

GREENSBORO, N.C.---A complaint, charging employment discrimination, was 
filed in U.S. District Court here today against the American Tobacco 
Company, makers of Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Tareyton cigarettes and 

Corona cigars. 

Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) 
asked for a preliminary and permanent injunction in behalf of six 
Negro employees. 

The LDF charged the Company and Local 192, Tobacco Workers’ Interna- 
tional Union, AFL-CIO, with "maintaining a policy, practice, custom 
or usage of discriminating" against Negro workers. 

Specific charges include: 

* Negro workers have been "denied equal opportunities for promo- 
tions, transfers and on-the-job training and have thus been 
restricted to the lower-paying and less desirable jobs tra- 
ditionally reserved for Negro employees of the Company." 

* "White employees of the Company doing the same type of work as 
Negro employees are sometimes paid higher wages than said 
Negro employees." 

* "Some jobs held by Negroes are not classified as skilled or 
semi-skilled whereas similar jobs held by white employees are 
so classified." 

One Negro worker "was demoted to a lower-paying job because he 
filed a charge of racial discrimination against the defendants 
with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." 

* "The custom and usage of segregated toilet and locker room 
facilities is maintained notwithstanding the withdrawal of 
their racial designations." 

The workers based their charges on grounds that the practices being 
attacked are unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Local 192, LDF attorneys assert, "has failed in its duty to fairly rep- 
resent plaintiffs" and other Negroes and has "joined in the maintenance 
of a policy, practice, custom or usage of limiting these persons to 
lower-paying and less desirable jobs." 

LDF attorneys include Julius LeVonne Chambers of Charlotte, North 
Carolina and Jack Greenberg, director-counsel, Robert Belton and 
Gabrielle A. Kirk of New York City. 

S80" 

Please bear in mind that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 
Fund, Inc. (LDF) is a separate and distinct organization from the 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People serving as 
the legal arm of the entire civil rights movement and representing 
members of all groups as well as unaffiliated individuals.

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American Tobacco Sued for Job Discrimination

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