Origins of the Committee for Equal Job Opportunity

Abstract

ACIPCO has a long history in Birmingham, reaching back to the early years of the twentieth century, a time when the city itself was still in its childhood. In the years surrounding World War I, the company’s founder, John J. Eagan, instituted policies at ACIPCO that placed it at the fore-front of the development of welfare capitalism. Inspired by a paternalism rooted in his Christian faith, Eagan “financed the construction of housing for workers, created health services, built churches, provided social workers, established recreational facilities, and helped finance a system of education for adults and their children:”¹ These programs, while aimed at improving the lives of ACIPCO’s workers, were also intended to instill in them traits of discipline, industry, and loyalty that would prove valuable to the company.² In fact, Eagan’s commitment to morality went beyond the provision of such services to include a series of strict rules regarding employee behavior, including a prohibition on the use of alcohol. Hailing that policy in particular, a 1933 profile in the Christian Science Monitor described it as a key reason why ACIPCO employees, both black and white, had been able to obtain certain markers of success including furnished homes, electricity, radios, and automobiles.³