[Ads-l] Material on "Affirmative Action" Coinage

[Shapiro, Fred]

It is not likely that there are existing drafts of President Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 that could be cited as antedatings of the term "affirmative action.''  But it might be worth checking into whether such drafts exist at the Kennedy Library.  Here are some discussions of African American lawyer Hobart Taylor, Jr.'s coinage of the term, information that could help in writing a note about the coinage in an entry for "affirmative action" in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English:

"The birth of the term 'affirmative action' itself dates from a few years earlier, under equally obscure circumstances.  On the evening of John F. Kennedy's inauguration as President in 1961, a young Negro lawyer named Hobart Taylor, Jr., dropped by an inaugural ball for Texans in Washington.  Taylor's father was a businessman in Houston and an ally of Lyndon Johnson's; this was the ball where Johnson got to reign, and Taylor was there to pay his respects to the new Vice President.  As he got to the head of the receiving line, Johnson pulled him aside and whispered that he needed to see Taylor about something the next day.  When Taylor came around, Johnson handed him a draft of Executive Order 10925, which established a body called the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.  Taylor read it and said he didn't like it.  Johnson rented him a toom at the Willard Hotel and told him to go there and rewrite the executive order.  While Taylor was working, two lawyers (and future Supreme Cout justices) dispatched by Johnson, Abe Fortas and Arthur Goldberg, showed up to help him.  After they had finished a draft, the three of them walked over to Fortas' law office to have it typed up.  It was there that Taylor, as an afterthought, inserted the words 'affirmative action.'  'I was searching for something that would give a sense of positiveness to performance under that Executive Order,' Taylor later told an interviewer, 'and I was torn between the words "positive action" and the words "affirmative action." ... And I took "affirmative" because it was alliterative.'  From this humble origin sprang one of the resounding phrases in contemporary American life."
    Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999), p. 162

"A key author of Kennedy's groundbreaking order — indeed the man specifically responsible for incorporating the phrase affirmative action — was Hobart Taylor, Jr., a black Texas-born attorney with a master's degree in economics from Howard University and a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School.  Taylor first become special counsel for the PCEEO and the later Executive Vice Chairman.  When Vice President Johnson asked him to rework a draft of the executive order in early 1961, it was Taylor who inserted the word 'affirmative' into a section on government contracting requiring federal contractors to 'take affirmative action to ensure that employees are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.'  Taylor wanted a phrase that was 'broader in concept' than any of the alternatives that were in circulation at the time.  To some observers, it might have seemed like a minor, semantic tweak — Taylor himself liked the alliterative feel of affirmative action — but change proved anything but semantic. ... Taylor recalled his intervention in a 1969 oral history interview: 'I went up to Abe Fortas' office, and I did it, I put the word "affirmative'" in there at that time.'  Quoted in Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 33.  Taylor's memory is corroborated by some documentary evidence.  When a manager at Polaroid, H. G. Pearson, wrote Taylor in 1965 to ask about how the term 'affirmative action' originated, Taylor wrote back to explain that he was the one who thought of including it.  'You have asked about how the term "affirmative action" originated.  I happen to be the person who thought of the addition of that adjective "affirmative" to the language which had appeared in the previous order.  I was torn between "affirmative" and "positive" and finally decided on "affirmative" not only because of its alliterative effect but because it was somewhat broader in concept — or so it seemed to me, but I am not any longer quite so sure.'  HT to H. G. Pearson, June 25, 1965, Folder: General Correspondence and Memoranda, Box 8, Hobart Taylor Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor."
    Anthony S. Chen, The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (2009), pp. 211, 358

"Hobart Taylor, Jr. ... recalled Johnson's summoning him to Washington from his law practice in Detroit in December 1960 to ask his help in designing and setting up the new committee ... Taylor was a successful black lawyer with a law degree from the University of Michigan (where he was editor of the Law Review) and a master's degree in economics from Howard University.  As Taylor reconstructed his role, Johnson handed him a draft of the executive order and asked him to stay overnight and work it over.  'I rewrote the darned thing, and I was in there the next morning,' Taylor recalled, 'and in there were Abe Fortas and Arthur Goldberg. ... They agreed roughly with what I was doing and made a suggestion or two.  Then we went in to see [Johnson], and everybody agreed on it, and then he asked me to go up and get a draft typed because it was all handwritten.'  Taylor concluded with the coup de maitre: 'I went up to Abe Fortas' office, and I did it.  For whatever it means to posterity, all of this talk about affirmative action, I put the word "affirmative" in there at that time.'"  [Footnoted to Hobart Taylor, Jr., oral history at LBJ Library, Tape 1, 12]
    Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy 1960-1972 (1990), p. 33

Fred Shapiro

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