6 Scaling Up: Creating a Minority Supply Chain

ALMOST EVERYBODY WANTED TO GET RID OF PLANS FOR Progress. President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg wanted to let it die and forget about it. When the new Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz discovered the so-called zero companies, with hardly any black employees, he wanted to override Taylor and directly inform the companies that they were not complying.1

Realizing the entire program was in jeopardy, including his own job, Taylor pitched Wirtz a new idea in July 1963 to hand the responsibility of spreading affirmative action to the companies themselves. Actually, the idea was not new. Troutman had proposed the plan the year he left the Committee.

Taylor persuaded the ...

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