World War II Discrimination complaints

pid

bell_aircraft_complaint_page_01

label

World War II Discrimination complaints

Timestamp

11/9/2021 12:27:31

URL for full object

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/38982807

Citation for full object

Complaint Form Filed by Norman H. Prince. National Archives RG Series: Closed Case Files, 1941 - 1946File Unit: Bell Aircraft Cor. 7_BR-161Item: Complaint Form Filed by Norman H. Prince, 12/22/1943. Accessed November 9, 2021

Filename in shared drive folder

bell_aircraft_complaint_Page_01

General description of the complete original artifact

These are forms registering workplace complaints about discrimination at various companies during the Second World War. There is no central database, but the typewritten forms here (of which there are two in the Archives) are clearly designed in bulk, to be filled out by several different people in turn.

Estimated number of records in data set

1000

Estimated number of fields if this were a database

15

Estimated time to digitize all records in set (hours)

50

Time period when data was created

1942-1945

Organization creating data

National Committee on Fair Employment Practices; the complainant him or herself.

Individual who created data (if known or guessable).

Probably an investigator the committee on fair employment practices, triggered by a less formal complaint. The individual documents appear to be numbered serially (there are two that have been scanned, and although the format is the same, the number in one ends with "P1" while the other ends with "P2".

Shortcomings of this taxonomy for data set (if any)

The racial taxonomy is surprising--the pre-listed classes for discrimination are "Negro, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Jew, Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, Mexican, German, Italian." Some of these groups are enormous, and some are quite small; the inclusion of German and Italian is likely because they were the enemies in the Second World War, but there might have been discrimination against, say, Greeks or Muslims as well. Seventh Day Adventist seems like a relatively small group to include--why not, say, Mormons? There is no spot to enter phone numbers, and Prince has squeezed his in on a missing line.

Notes about the image you chose

The investigator has used a green pen while the complainant uses a black one, making it easy to see who filled out what information here.