Document 5.15.5: Excerpts from the Senate Debate on the Philadelphia Plan, December 1969

During Senate hearings on the Plan, opponents denounced it as a quota system and an unwarranted extension of federal authority, while supporters of the Plan emphasized the need for bold action against the seemingly perpetual forces of discrimination.

Senator John Pastore (Democrat from Rhode Island)

What we are confronted with is the fact that this Nation suffers with a difficult situation, a very distressing one, which erupted in Philadelphia not too long ago. Because the administration has the responsibility of doing something about it before it erupts all over the country, it initiated a plan it thought would solve the problem for the time being.

The fact remains that the administration, in trying to bring about a solution of this tremendous problem, initiated the so-called Philadelphia plan…the program [is] essential for the stabilization of the situation, which has become a quite irritable one and a serious one in the Nation.

Senator John McClellan (Democrat from Arkansas)

The Philadelphia Plan does not constitute an implementation of the Civil Rights Act [of 1964] or the congressional intent which was enunciated then. The plan’s requirement that certain Government contractors meet prescribed racial employment quotas is simply an example of the overreaching exercise of Executive power.

Senator Edward Brooke (Republican from Massachusetts)

In 1966, Senator Brooke became the first African American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction.

The real problem of discrimination in America is…what I prefer to call “systemic” or “intrinsic” discrimination. Discrimination against minorities, particularly in the employment field, is built into the very structure of American society. Three black children in four in America attend an essentially segregated school from the day they enter kindergarten…

Even those blacks who survive the system, however, find obstacles placed in their way which do not confront most other Americans. If a minority applicant seeks employment…he will find that the employment is often based upon union recommendation. The union passes the word to its members that an employer is looking for men; those members are predominantly white, and the social patterns are such that they will pass the word along to predominantly white friends…

The policy of assigning minority employees to “traditional” jobs or departments is also an informal, systemic barrier to full opportunity in employment…

These are the kinds of situations which the Philadelphia plan…[was] designed to overcome.
Source: Congressional Record 115, Pt.2 (December 18, 1969): 39961, 39964-39965, 39966-39967