LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias

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- Press Releases
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- cbde9f28-ba92-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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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 November 23, 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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LDF Sues Cannon Mills for Flagrant Job Bias

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