en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_National_Labor_Union
2 corrections found
It was not until after World War II in the 1940s that the U.S. government stepped in and created the Fair Employment Practice Commission.
This is chronologically wrong: the federal FEPC was created on June 25, 1941, during World War II, not after it. The original body was also a Committee on Fair Employment Practice, not a postwar “Commission.”
Full reasoning
Federal action on fair employment began during World War II, not after it. Executive Order 8802, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, established a Committee on Fair Employment Practice to handle discrimination complaints in defense work. That date is months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941 and years before the war ended in 1945.
The National Park Service’s transcription of Executive Order 8802 states both the date and the body it created: "There is established ... a Committee on Fair Employment Practice" on June 25, 1941. The National Archives likewise says the first Committee on Fair Employment Practice was established by Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941, and later reorganized in 1943.
So the article’s statement is incorrect in two ways:
- It places the creation after World War II, when it actually happened during the war in 1941.
- It calls the body a Commission, but the federal entity created by Executive Order 8802 was a Committee on Fair Employment Practice.
2 sources
- Executive Order 8802 - Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
June 25, 1941 ... There is established in the Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice...
- Record Groups 165 - 299 | National Archives
The first Committee on Fair Employment Practice was established in the Office of Production Management (OPM) by Executive Order 8802 of June 25, 1941 ... That committee was abolished by Executive Order 9346 of May 27, 1943, which created a new Committee on Fair Employment Practice.
Douglass's newspaper New Era was chosen as the official organ of the union.
The convention endorsed Frederick Douglass’s **New National Era** as its official organ, not a paper titled simply **New Era**.
Full reasoning
The article gives the wrong newspaper title. At the second CNLU convention, the resolution adopted by the delegates endorsed the New National Era as the union’s official organ.
A documentary edition of the convention proceedings reproduces the resolution as: "Resolved, That this National Labor Union endorse the NEW NATIONAL ERA, edited by Frederick Douglass ... as the national organ..." That matches Library of Congress and New York Heritage records showing that Douglass had taken over The New Era in 1870 and renamed it The New National Era.
So the error is not that Douglass's paper was chosen, but that the article gives the paper the wrong title at the time it was selected.
2 sources
- The Second Colored National Labor Union Convention, January 1871 | The Black Worker During the Era of the National Labor Union-Volume 2 | Temple University Press and North Broad Press
Resolved, That this National Labor Union endorse the NEW NATIONAL ERA, edited by Frederick Douglass, Esq., in the city of Washington, as the national organ of the National Labor Union of Colored Men of the United States of America.
- New National Era (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874 | Library of Congress
By 1870 ... Frederick Douglass ... The New Era newspaper began weekly publication in 1870 ... New National Era (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874.