The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr is a nine-volume historical documentary edition of the NAACP Washington Bureau historical papers that were prepared by Clarence Mitchell, Jr., during his struggle for the passage of civil rights laws. The publications begin with the weekly, monthly, and annual reports Mitchell prepared when he was associate director of the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), the agency created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to end discrimination in the national defense industry. Creation of the FEPC marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. The papers are an indispensable source for studying the revolutionary evolution of America’s social history and constitutional system of government in the modern period.
The project documents the contributions of eight presidents to the establishment and enforcement of a national civil rights program and explains how “Desegregation by Presidential Order” was achieved. They provide the foundation for assessing the contributions of the armed services, the Justice Department, and other federal agencies to the civil rights struggle during their administrations. This project shows how Mitchell developed the evolutionary strategy in Congress for winning passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first such measure in 82 years, the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and the adoption of constructive national policies for enforcing those laws.
Project Director: Denton L. Watson
Host Institution: SUNY College at Old Westbury
