Eisenhower Executive Order 10479 Creates Committee on Government Contracts, Weak Anti-Discrimination Enforcement

On August 13, 1953, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10479, establishing the President’s Committee on Government Contracts under Vice President Richard Nixon’s chairmanship. The committee was charged with ensuring that federal contractors did not discriminate in employment, but its reliance on voluntary compliance and lack of enforcement power made it largely ineffective—a pattern of symbolic civil rights action without substantive enforcement that characterized the Eisenhower approach.

The executive order replaced Truman’s Government Contract Compliance Committee and built on the legacy of Roosevelt’s Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), which Congress had defunded in 1946. Unlike the FEPC, which had real investigative authority during World War II, Eisenhower’s committee could only obtain voluntary compliance through “education and persuasion.” It had no power to cancel contracts or bar discriminating firms from federal work.

Vice President Nixon chaired the committee and appeared to take the role seriously, presiding over meetings and issuing reports. The committee investigated complaints, held hearings, and negotiated with contractors. But without enforcement mechanisms, progress was minimal. Major defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed continued discriminatory hiring practices. Southern contractors routinely ignored committee recommendations.

The NAACP and other civil rights organizations criticized the committee’s limitations. They documented continued exclusion of Black workers from skilled trades in government-funded construction, discrimination at federally funded universities, and segregated facilities at contractors’ plants. Nixon’s involvement gave him civil rights credentials that would later serve his presidential campaigns, but produced little immediate change.

The committee’s experience illustrated a recurring dynamic in civil rights policy: executive action that appeared to address discrimination while delegating authority to entities without power or willingness to enforce. This pattern of symbolic commitment without enforcement resources characterized federal civil rights policy throughout the 1950s, enabling the appearance of progress while permitting continued discrimination.