ABSTRACT
The politics of fair employment policy revolves around the shift from equal employment opportunity to affirmative action. Federal judges, presidents and bureaucrats, members of Congress, political parties, coalitions of interest groups, and political activists have functioned within a political environment that has evolved from controversy and divisiveness to general consensus and agreement to renewed conflict and tension. Congress was slow to respond to demands for civil rights legislation; no such action was taken between Reconstruction and 1957. By the middle of 1963, debate in Congress focused on the public accommodations provisions of the civil rights bills that were before it because great attention had been generated by the sit-ins and demonstrations directed at restaurant and hotel operators who refused to serve black customers. The passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 was a defeat for civil rights groups, whose major goal had been to empower the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to issue cease-and-desist orders against discriminatory employment practices.
