THE PRESIDENT OF LOCKHEED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION and Vice President Lyndon Johnson agreed to end Lockheed’s workforce segregation on May 25, 1961. Looking back, this contract, which was announced with great fanfare at the White House, signified far more than the public acknowledgment of systematic racial segregation in employment. It illustrated the leading role that prominent corporations were beginning to embrace by hiring and promoting the widest range of workers in this country. Businesses were accepting responsibility for actively shaping the full scope of the American workforce. If corporations wish to have the best educated, highest motivated and most diverse workforce in the world today, they should resume and expand the process of reaching.
