The Civil Rights Act Turned 50 in 2014

During the years 1961-63, fresh out of college, I was employed as a management trainee for a machine tool manufacturing company located in Fairfield County, Connecticut. For those who are not familiar with machine tools, they are devices such as lathes, drills, and milling machines that are used to shape metal.

That job gave me an opportunity to learn the metal fabrication industry, as there were only two trainees hired that year and we were rotated from one department to another, both within the office and out in the factory.

In the office, I spent time in what was then called the personnel department, which I liked very much, and in production control, which back in the pre-computer days was the dullest work I’d ever been asked to do. The primary activity was recording the progress of each part through every step in the manufacturing process on heavy paper “tub cards,” so that no matter where a specific part was, it could be located.

My only fond memory of the production control department involved a parts analyst named Jimmie, who had mastered the art of appearing to analyze a tub card while surreptitiously reading The Bridgeport Telegram—which he concealed in the top right-hand drawer of his desk. He also managed to keep an eye out for any of the several bosses and would stealthily close the drawer on their approach.

It was more fun to be out in the factory, rotating through the manufacturing areas. I loved the foundry, where giant cylindrical furnaces melted down pig iron and scrap metal before it was poured into beautifully crafted sand molds, where it hardened and eventually formed machine parts, some as large as automobiles. I also spent time in drilling, lathes, assembly, and heat-treat, but it was in the milling department that the event I now relate took place.

The company had an apprenticeship program that trained young men who wanted to learn the metal fabrication trades. These apprentices typically underwent classroom and on-the-job training, regulated by the Connecticut Department of Labor, for four years before qualifying as journeymen machinists, mechanics, and tool & die makers.

I don’t recall a single female or minority apprentice in my time with the company. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act--which would make it illegal to discriminate against minorities and other groups in hiring, training, pay, promotions, and discipline--had not yet been signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, so a scarcity of minority apprentices would not likely have raised any questions.

Nevertheless, on that day the foreman came down the aisle between the rows of Bridgeport, Cincinnati, and K&T horizontal and vertical milling machines with a young Black apprentice who was decked out in new safety shoes and green work clothes. The foreman started introducing the new man to the workers in the department.

The apprentice’s last name was, let’s say, McIntyre, and the foreman found it quite humorous that a Black man could have a Scottish surname. “Hey, can you guess what this kid’s name is? It’s McIntyre!” he exclaimed, bursting into deep guffaws.

There weren’t a lot of Black history courses being taught in the early 60s, but it was not an unknown fact that many African-Americans were descended from slaves who were forced to take on the surnames of their masters, or who voluntarily chose to do so because their own names had been lost to time. In any case, the name struck the foreman’s funny-bone, and it was in this way that apprentice McIntyre commenced his training.

Looking at the young man, I thought he must have been discomfited by the foreman’s manner of introduction. I certainly know that I was embarrassed for him. Yet, standing there among the assembled group of White machinists, I probably put a stupid grin on my face and went along with the joke. And although it may have crossed my mind to call the foreman to task for his behavior, I was in no position to do so.

The foreman is long deceased now, and the company chained its doors decades ago. But the experience I gained in that company’s training program laid the foundation for a career that has spanned the last fifty years. From time to time, I think of young McIntyre and wonder what became of him. Perhaps he also learned from his training and has had a good life. I hope that the manner in which he was introduced to us so many years ago had no lasting effect on him; I hope he can’t even recall that it happened. But I do.

The Civil Rights Act will turn 50 in 2014. Has it legislated the milling-department foreman’s behavior out of existence? Have we learned anything in the last 50 years?

What would happen if we all just treated one another with respect?

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