LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias

Press Release
June 6, 1970

LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias preview

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  • Press Releases, Volume 6. LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias, 1970. cbde9f28-ba92-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/15f8f1a9-0d20-4d7a-9a70-e5d5cf13c9f9/ldf-sues-cannon-mills-for-flagrant-job-bias. Accessed April 29, 2025.

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' 1 
President 

Hon. Francii 

aA) FE PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel 
egal ‘efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public Relation: 
‘ACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. FOR RELEASE Soma Daven Te, 

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

JUNE 6, 1970 

LDF SUES CANNON MILLS 
FOR FLAGRANT JOB BIAS 

SALISBURY, N.C.---Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 
Fund, Inc. (LDF) filed a complaint this week in the U.S. District Court 
here against what may be one of the most pervasive and tenacious 
policies of employment discrimination maintained by a major U.S. 
corporation. 

The Cannon Mills Company, based in Kannapolis, North Carolina, 
is one of the largest textile companies in the nation and has therefore 
received key defense contracts. 

According to LDF attorneys, in most cases of job discrimination 
complaints, textile companies have at least responded with written 
assurances of reform. 

However, despite several actions against Cannon Mills, they assert, 
the company has refused to offer any such assurances. 

The company is charged with the following violations of the fair 
employment practices provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Title VII): 

* recruitment of new employees through means designed to reach 
more white persons than black; 

* use of arbitrary standards of hiring which are irrelevant to 
job requirements and have the effect of weeding out black 
applicants; 

* segregated jobs, departments and classifications on the basis 
of race, sex, or both; 

* residential housing, owned or controlled by Cannon Mills, is 
segregated on the basis of race, with housing for blacks 
inferior to that of whites; 

* the company excludes virtually all blacks from supervisory, 
managerial, professional, and clerical jobs on the basis of 
race and sex; 

* black employees are assigned the lowest paid, most strenuous 
duties, hazardous to health and personal safety; 

* the company depresses all wages of black employees by classifying 
jobs as "white" and "Negro" and paying the lowest wages possible 
under the latter classification; 

* the company depresses wages of female employees by segregating 
jobs on the basis of sex; 

* the company discourages black employees and applicants from 
opposing and expressing opposition to its discriminatory 
policies and from actively seeking promotions and training 
for future promotions; 

* subtle forms of discrimination are practiced by the company 
such as opposing more vigorously the workmen's compensation 
claims of black employees, discharging black employees more 
readily for minor infractions or suspicion of infractions, 
refusing to hire black women if they are employed as housemaids. 
Negroes are expected to have higher qualifications for any job, 
to be more productive, more punctual, and absent less often and 
for more compelling reasons that white employees. 

LDF attorneys in the case are William L. Robinson of New York City, 
Julius L. Chambers of Charlotte, and Conrad 0. Pearson of Durham. 

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