Freedom Is Not Enough

The Opening of the American Workplace

Bibliographic Data

ID10020132
AuthorsA S Chen (University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume93
Issue4
Pages1307-1307
Publication date2007-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/25094732
OpenAlexW2332257672
LanguageEN
Citations received19

In the mid-twentieth century, it would have been hard for the average American to conceive of a black man's serving as the chief executive officer of American Express or a white woman's anchoring the nightly news. Today, such things are not merely facts of life; almost everyone sees them as signs of societal progress. How did such a social and cultural transformation occur? That is the question that motivates Nancy MacLean's history of the battle for job equality, Freedom Is Not Enough. The title of the book is a fitting phrase that comes from a 1965 speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Howard University. Freedom itself was not enough for the African Americans, feminists, Mexican Americans, and liberals—Jewish and Gentile, women and men—who are the protagonists of her narrative. They sought something more substantial than laws that banned segregation and mandated equal treatment. Nor did high politics and policies prove sufficient to the task of overcoming the “culture of exclusion” that pervaded the American workplace. To be sure, pieces of legislation proclaiming equality did matter, and MacLean shows how Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was among the most important of them, serving as a profound catalyst for social change. But such change was sustained and deepened only because thousands of ordinary Americans who had been treated unfairly in the labor market marched in the streets, found new allies, caucused at the office, insisted on affirmative action, succeeded on the job, and stood up for themselves in court when the opposition proved unwilling or unable to change old policies and practices. Here, too, freedom was not enough. Opening up the American workplace—and shattering deeply rooted prejudices about race, gender, and work—took collective struggle from below

Affirmative action · Art · Battle · Equal employment opportunity · Legislation · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society