Atlanta Daily World

To Test Chicago's FEP Ordinance

CHICAGO.-(ANP)—This city's new fair employment ordinance may soon be tested through the Chicago Civil Liberties committee's case against the discriminatory employment policies of the Pepsodent company. The former sponsors of Amos 'n' Andy refused to hire Miss Helen Harmon as a typist because she is a Negro.

Miss Harmon, a student of Roosevelt college here, answered an ad in a local daily newspaper in the middle of March. She talked by telephone with the personnel director, who told her to report for work. But when she reported, she was told that the Pepsodent company does not hire colored typists. The white employees would quit if Negro typists were hired, he said.

WORKER SCARE

Milton Wenzler, personnel director, admitted that the company does not hire Negro typists on the ground that white office workers will quit.

"I am afraid our employees would not like it," he answered to a direct query as to whether the company would employ Negro office workers. Negroes are hired only in a menial capacity by Pepsodent, he said.

Pepsodent sponsors the Bob Hope show, and is a branch of an international Lever brothers soap cartel, which sells millions of dollars' worth of their products to American Negroes.

The Chicago Civil Liberties committee will file an affidavit with the city prosecutor against the Pepsodent company, said Grafton Little, minorities secretary, marking the first test case for the new city fair employment ordinance, which was enacted last year.