American Tobacco Sued for Job Discrimination

Document text

The following text has been generated automatically during the document scanning process. It may contain errors, omissions, or incorrect formatting. Please refer to the PDF document if this text is not usable.

Download

By downloading, publishing, or reusing the Materials outside of the Website, you hereby confirm and attest that you have read and agree to the LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use linked below. We draw your attention to the following:

For those Materials owned by LDF, your use of the Material outside the Site is solely for one or more of the following (the “Permitted Purposes”):

Non-commercial research and private study;
Teaching, scholarship and instruction (including distance learning);
Non-commercial print and non-commercial online use;
Criticism, comment or news reporting; or
For people with visual disabilities (See Section 121 of the Copyright Act).
For those Materials not owned by LDF you understand that:
- It is your responsibility to determine whether the way you plan to use the materials falls within the copyright exception of Fair Use.
- For any use outside of Fair Use, it is your responsibility to seek and obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders.

LDF hereby grants you the right to use LDF owned Materials for the Permitted Purposes without seeking further permission from LDF.

If you publish or redistribute any Materials (including excerpts and quotes), you must include a credit line and/or proper citation to the source of the Material. However, you may not use the name of LDF in any manner which creates any false association between you and LDF or that incorrectly implies any sponsorship or endorsement of you by LDF.

NOTICE: Uses that do not comply with these Terms or that do not fall under Fair Use (or another exception) may make you liable for copyright infringement.

Read the full LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use Here.

I agree to the terms and conditions for use of this content.

If you would like to use this content in other ways, contact us at

This item is featured in:

Color photo of Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, seated indoors and wearing glasses, during her oral history interview.

Gabrielle Kirk McDonald Oral History

Collection
- Press Releases
Creator
- LDF
Taxonomy
Identifier
- c5e00264-b892-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

Cite this item

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 November 04, 2025.

Copied!

    +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.

Copyright notice

This collection and the tools to navigate it (the “Collection”) are available to the public for general educational and research purposes, as well as to preserve and contextualize the history of the content and materials it contains (the “Materials”). Like other archival collections, such as those found in libraries, LDF owns the physical source Materials that have been digitized for the Collection; however, LDF does not own the underlying copyright or other rights in all items and there are limits on how you can use the Materials. By accessing and using the Material, you acknowledge your agreement to the Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Materials.

Additional info

To the extent that LDF includes information about the Materials’ origins or ownership or provides summaries or transcripts of original source Materials, LDF does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of such information, transcripts or summaries, and shall not be responsible for any inaccuracies.

American Tobacco Sued for Job Discrimination

This item is featured in:

Collection

Creator

Taxonomy

Identifier

Cite this item

Copyright notice

Additional info

You may also be interested in