Chicago is one of the “sore spot” centers in the field of job discrimination, with at least 1,484 firms here practicing job bias on the basis of race or religion, according to testimony given here today by William Karp, executive director of the Bureau on Jewish Employment Practices.
Mr. Karp, appearing before the Illinois Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission, said that about 700 of the discriminating firms were “blue chip” corporations.
Job specifications maintained by employers here, he declared, included conditions that prospective employes be “Gentiles only,” or “no Catholics,” or “Caucasian,” or “Nordic only,” or “anything but a Catholic.” Some of the firms engaging in these practices, he declared, held Federal contracts, and others claimed they were eligible for government contracts in spite of practicing discrimination.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
