Investigations and litigation

Consists of three file folders documenting investigations and litigation involving employment discrimination against African-American members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union. These workers were employed in the oil, chemical, and refining industries of the southern Gulf region.

File contents include: correspondence and memoranda; petitions, complaints, and briefs; legal notes; reports; and typescript minutes of a special meeting of the Gulf Workmen's Committee, Local 23, Oil Workers International Union. Most of the documented cases pertain to discriminatory hiring, seniority, and promotion practices of employers. One lawsuit involving Locals #23 and #254 of the Gulf Oil Corporation, Port Arthur, TX, involved the perpetuation of discriminatory practices through the establishment of a segregated local within the same bargaining unit. Often, the complicity of white-dominated local unions perpetuated discriminatory practices.

Major companies include the Carbide-Carbon Company, Texas City, TX; Gulf Oil Corporation, Port Arthur, TX; Shell Oil Company and Shell Chemical Company, Houston, TX; and Standard Oil Corporation, Baton Rouge, LA. Weaver, as Director of the CIO's Civil Rights Committee and alternate representative on the President's Committee on Government Contracts, occupied a strategic bureaucratic position to assist the NACCP Legal Department and black local unions in their fight to enforce fair employment practices provisions. Major correspondents include Robert L. Carter, Herbert Hill and Jack Greenburg of the NACCP, and William Renfro, General Counsel of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union.