[Ads-l] More Re: Material on "Affirmative Action" Coinage

Fri Sep 5 02:04:50 UTC 2025

And kudos also to Bill.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 8:06 PM
To: American Dialect Society <ads-l at listserv.uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Material on "Affirmative Action" Coinage

Wow, this is amazing, super-kudos to Jeff.

Anything that says "proposed order" is, by definition, a legitimate antedating, even if it is undated.  The OED or Oxford Dictionary of African American English could use a date format such as "a1961 6 Mar."

Fred Shapiro

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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jeff Prucher <000000b93183dc86-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 7:18 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Material on "Affirmative Action" Coinage

Following Bill's suggestion, here is some potentially relevant stuff from the Kennedy Library's website, including two uses of "affirmative action" that, based on internal evidence, antedate the official executive order itself, but postdate Taylor's initial draft.
In a letter to President Kennedy dated Feb. 14, 1961, in which he describes "conclusions and recommendations" on the work of the Government Contract Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, LBJ includes the word "affirmative" in the way described by Taylor, but not the phrase "affirmative action":
p.1Non-discrimination is a negative goal. The positive goal is the achieve [sic] for all our citizens equal opportunity. Government's power to contract can be -- and should be -- used as an affirmative influence toward that higher goal.https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jfklibrary.org%2Fasset-viewer%2Farchives%2Fjfkpof-093-006%23%3Fimage_identifier%3DJFKPOF-093-006-p0038&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C3aad6850e39047f44aae08ddec095973%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638926247110707368%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=KwvnIps3sd7e7kOH6cRaLprh5PTqsE62JemGcKVIp1k%3D&reserved=0
p. 2That the anti-discrimination clause now used in government contracts be revised to impose not merely the negative obligation of avoiding discrimination but the affirmative duty to employ applicants and to treat employees on the job on the basis of their qualifications and not because of race, creed, color or national origin.https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jfklibrary.org%2Fasset-viewer%2Farchives%2Fjfkpof-093-006%23%3Fimage_identifier%3DJFKPOF-093-006-p0039&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C3aad6850e39047f44aae08ddec095973%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638926247110755329%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FIkNLmgm%2BlCunddXK%2Bt9GBpkzX5wiftlKFTbKJszeGg%3D&reserved=0
More interestingly, the next page in the folder is a summary of the proposed executive order, which includes the phrase "affirmative action". The page itself is undated. I do not know whether it is safe to infer that it was attached to Johnson's letter to JFK or not (perhaps the archivists at the JFK library would know). But because the Executive Order Establishing the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity is explicitly described as "proposed", I think it's safe to assume that it antedates the March 6, 1961 order itself.
The proposed Order would:...6. Require Government contractors and subcontractors to sign contract clauses insuring that affirmative action will be taken against employment discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin in the performance of the contract.https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jfklibrary.org%2Fasset-viewer%2Farchives%2Fjfkpof-093-006%23%3Fimage_identifier%3DJFKPOF-093-006-p0041&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C3aad6850e39047f44aae08ddec095973%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638926247110774545%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=s2VZ2fQTqdqf2zuJNkGWg1AYdSv0o9Qgw8rGmcLz8Rk%3D&reserved=0
The next item in the folder (again, I have no idea if these were all part of the same memo -- it sure seems like you would want to provide an executive summary of what the president was being asked to sign, but I'm no presidential scholar) also presumably pre-dates the actual order itself. It is entitled "Comparative Functions of the Proposed President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and the Present President's Contract Committee". Item 4 in the "Proposed Executive Order" column reads:
Government contractors and sub[-]contractors would be directed to sign contract clauses insuring they will take affirmative action against employment discrimination.https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jfklibrary.org%2Fasset-viewer%2Farchives%2Fjfkpof-093-006%23%3Fimage_identifier%3DJFKPOF-093-006-p0043&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C3aad6850e39047f44aae08ddec095973%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638926247110810647%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=WB0UkCFLitEfL6fbcjOMa5tQj0RCuaVwqK%2FUHjyfxiU%3D&reserved=0
I didn't find any actual drafts of the order, but one thing they have at that library is material related to the order and the committee it established, and I would not consider that I made anything like an exhaustive search.
- Jeff Prucher
    On Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 05:58:55 AM PDT, Shapiro, Fred <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

 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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