'Help-Wanted Female': Editor &Amp; Publisher Frames a Civil Rights Issue

On a nationally televised broadcast, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law promised to bring sweeping changes to the nation by prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations and employment, encouraging desegregation in the schools, and barring unequal application of voter registration requirements. The law also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), with authority to review complaints but few enforcement powers.

Tucked under Title VIl of the Civil Rights Act was a provision that threatened to shake the newspaper industry to its foundation, force a redesign to the decades-old organization of employment classified advertising, and possibly cost the industry millions of dollars in advertising revenue by eliminating the gender-specific classifications. Under the new law, it became "an unlawful employment practice for an employer...to publish or cause to be...published any notice or advertisement relating to employment...indicating any preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination, based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin," except where a "bona fide occupational qualification" existed.1

Confused and unsure how to proceed regarding Title VII, newspaper publishers, classified adverstising managers, editors, production supervisors, and attorneys looked to their trade magazine, Editor & Publisher, to keep them up to date. For the next nine long years, the magazine acted as a forum of opinion and reported on EEOC's changing guidelines, state laws, and human rights commission rulings affecting classified advertising, and court cases that promised to settle the matter.

This article examines...

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