Executive Order 8802

Executive Order 8802 was an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941. It prohibited ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry, including in companies, unions, and federal agencies.^[1] It also set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Executive Order 8802 was the first federal action, though not a law, to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States. It represented the first executive civil rights directive since Reconstruction.^[2]

The President's statement that accompanied the order cited the war effort, saying that "the democratic way of life within the nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups," and cited reports of discrimination:^[3]

There is evidence available that needed workers have been barred from industries engaged in defense production solely because of considerations of race, creed, color or national origin, to the detriment of workers' morale and of national unity.

The order was issued in response to pressure from civil rights activists A. Philip Randolph, Walter White and others involved in the March on Washington Movement, who had planned a march on Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1941, to protest racial discrimination in industry and the military.