Documenting Desegregation: Equal Opportunity in Private Sector Employment Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or ethnicity illegal for firms with over 15 employees. Despite this landmark legislation, employment discrimination clearly persists in the workplace today. In 2004 alone, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed 280 discrimination lawsuits based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although these EEOC actions suggest that the problem of discrimination in the workplace is still with us, we do not know just how much progress we have made since 1964, and how much more we need to make before the nation’s workplaces are equally open to all.

With support from the Foundation, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Kevin Stainback will write a book tracking the movement of American workplaces from primarily white male establishments to environments that are increasingly integrated in terms of race and gender. They will use data from the EEOC which tracks the racial composition of private sector workplaces with fifty or more employees. The book will focus on trends in workplace segregation as well as the efficacy of anti-discrimination enforcement measures. They will explore factors that may explain why workplace integration has waxed and waned over time, such as changes in the economy, labor supply, federal oversight of government contractors, employment law, and local organizational pressures regarding segregation or desegregation.