Seven Employment Bias Charges Filed Against Four Va. Firms

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> 3 JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

ie, Allan Kudght Chalmers FOR RELEASE 
Director-Counsel Thursday 

Jack Greenberg July 29, 1965 

SEVEN EMPLOYMENT BIAS CHARGES 
FILED AGAINST FOUR VA. FIRMS 

"Rights Groups Begin to Move Under Title VII 

WASHINGTON, D, C,--Four Virginia firms were charged with dis- 

criminatory hiring practices in seven complaints filed here today 

with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

One of the complaints also names Local 371, Textile Workers 

Union of America. 

The complaints, filed by Negroes in Danville, Hampton and Front 

Royal, are the result of investigation by Richard J, Hopkins, a 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund field worker, 

Three Negroes employed by Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock 

Co., Hampton, charged the firm with failure to upgrade Negroes to 

supervisory positions. 

Of more than 200 supervisory positions in three departments 

mentioned in the complaints, only three are held by Negroes, the 

workers allege. The three departments employ about 2,500 persons, 

including about 650 Negroes, according to the complaint, 

Two complaints charge that the Dan River Mill plant at Danville 

classifies jobs as being exclusively for whites or exclusively 

for Negroes. 

A Negro woman said that when she applied for a job at the 

plant, she was informed that the personnel office had no openings 

for Negro women at the time, and had 100 applications from Negro 

women on file. 

A Negro man who has been employed as a laborer at the plant 

for 18 years charged that the firm reserves jobs such as operating 

machines for white workers, and assigns Negroes to such duties as 

"hauling cotton, cleaning up and marking and roping." 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Ss 



Seven Employment Bias Charges +2~ July 29, 1965 
Filed Against Four Va, Firms aoe 

& 

The Danville Sitting Service, an employment agency, is charged 

with refusing employment to a Negro woman, The complaint alleges 

that the job applicant was told by a representative of the service 

that "she had no call for colored and she couldn't make her 

customers hire colored." 

A worker at the Front Royal Plant of the American Viscose 

Division of the FMC Corp., alleges that the company maintains a 

system of de facto double seniority lines designed to segregate 

Negro workers and restrict their advancement. 

The complaint further charges the TWUA local with refusal 

to negotiate with the plant management to correct the discriminatory 

practices despite complaints by Negro workers. 

The complaints were filed jointly by the National Association 

for the Advancement of Colored People and the NAACP Legal Defense 

and Educational Fund, two independent organizations. 

Herbert Hill, NAACP labor secretary, delivered the complaihts 

to the commission. A total of 26 complaints involving seven 

southern states were filed in what may be one of the first major 

tegts of the fair employment provisions of Title VII of the Civil 

Rights Act of 1964, 

Hopkins, a student at Howard University Law School, is one 

of 10 field workers in a summer project to help implement Title VII, 

He works out of the offices of the State NAACP Conference, 301 East 

Clay St., Richmond, in cooperation with W, Lester Banks, executive 

secretary of the conference, 

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