Affirmative Action
President John F. Kennedy inaugurated the federal policy of affirmative action with Executive Order 10295. This Executive Order, which established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also declared that companies contracting business with the federal government needed to take "affirmative action" to hire minorities. President Johnson later expanded the government's affirmative action programs in 1965, with Executive Order, which decreed that all federal government agencies must take "affirmative action."
Since its inception, affirmative action has been a controversial policy and it has evolved over time. It has been controversial and some commentators have blamed affirmative action for causing the split in the liberal coalition that led American politics for much of the post-World War II period.
LexisNexis Academic
LexisNexis Congressional
"Affirmative Action in an Economy of Scarcity." Testimony of Bayard Rustin and Norman Hill to the Special Subcommittee on Education, U.S. House of Representatives. September 17, 1974.
LexisNexis UPA Collections
An early and perhaps surprising critic of affirmative action was the civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin. Rustin had been a key organizer of the March on Washington in August 1963 during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. But in the mid-1960s, Rustin grew critical of some of the directions the movement was taking.
In the Bayard Rustin Papers, students can examine Rustin's speeches and correspondence to get an interesting perspective.
The Bayard Rustin Papers
Black Power and Coalition Politics by Bayard Rustin
Another contemporary perspective on the early years of African American can be found in
Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 23
Collections of presidential papers dealing with civil rights issues also contain documentation on affirmative. These include
Civil Rights during the Nixon Administration
Civil Rights during the Carter Administration, Part 1: Papers of the Special Assistant for Black Affairs
Affirmative action in education--Bakke v. Board of Regents
Affirmative action in employment--Philadelphia Plan, Weber
opposition of organized labor
Civil Rights Acts of 1990 and 1991 covered in Civil Rights during the Bush Administration