LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias
Press Release
June 6, 1970

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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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li] . ' 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. =30= 25