The 1938 minimum wage law deliberately excluded majority-black occupations

Evidence

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which included minimum-wage provisions, excluded farm laborers and domestic workers specifically because those were majority-black occupations—according to the 1930 census, 65 percent of all black workers were in one of the two fields. Several members of Congress objected to creating equal wage standards for black and white workers as the bill was being debated, but Florida congressman James Mark Wilcox’s explanation was most plain: “There has always been a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor….We may rest assured, therefore, that when we turn over to a federal bureau or board the power to fix wages, it will prescribe the same wage for the Negro that it prescribes for the white man. Now, such a plan might work in some sections of the United States but those of us who know the true situation know that it just will not work in the South. You cannot put the Negro and the white man on the same basis and get away with it.” — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 354

Categorization

• SEED: The Wilcox quote is powerful primary material for an essay on how ‘race-neutral’ New Deal laws were engineered to preserve racial wage gaps — the law’s own legislative history proves intent.
• DEFINE: Names one specific provision (FLSA exclusion of farm and domestic workers) with the exact statistical justification — directly serves reader’s goal of naming four specific provisions.