In 1949, the Washington State Legislature enacts the Fair Employment Practices Act (FEPA). The FEPA rules discrimination based on race, creed, color, or national origin prohibited in employment.
The Washington Federation of Labor opposed the bill. However a strong array of supporters lobbied for it. In 1944, the Seattle Urban League, the NAACP, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, joined by the Seattle YWCA, the American Federation of Teachers, the Anti-Defamation League, and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union introduced and reintroduced the measure until it passed.
Sources:
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 171, 172.
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