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Black Caucus Groups at Xerox Corporation

Wilson and McColough's 1968 Letter

May 2, 1968

To All Xerox Managers:

We at Xerox are among those who are compelled to accept the indictment of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: What white Americans have never fully understood -- but what the Negro can never forget -- is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto.

White institutions created it. white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.'

We, like all other Americans, share the responsibility for a color-divided nation; and in all honesty, we need not look beyond our own doorstep to find out why. In Rochester, one of the first American cities scarred by racial strife, Xerox continues to employ only a very small percentage of Negroes. In other major -cities, including some that have suffered even greater violence, we employ no Negroes at all.

Thus, despite a stated policy that seeks to fulfill our obligations to society -- and even though the significant steps we have taken have been publicly praised -- our performance is still far from a shining beacon of corporate responsibility.

We know, of course, that many Negroes - fearing rejection - simply don't apply to Xerox for jobs. And of those who do apply, many fail to meet our usual standards of qualification. But those factors obviously cannot be used as excuses. They are, rather, the very problems which Xerox must and will attack in the future.

In order to respond with concerted action to the Advisory Commission's recommendations that American industry hire, train and suitably employ one million Negroes within the next three years, we are therefore going to adopt these immediate courses of action: First, we will heavily intensify our recruiting of Negroes and other minorities. If, as our past experience indicates, they are reluctant to come to us, then we will go to them.

A special recruiting effort at University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan has proved the validity of this approach by substantially increasing minority employment in the space of a few months. We will now extend that effort throughout all the departments, divisions, and subsidiaries of Xerox.

Secondly, all managers responsible for hiring -- regardless of geographical location -- will re-examine their selection standards and training programs. Our past efforts, by and large, have sought to find only the best qualified people for Xerox, regardless of age, race or religion. But that goal, however valid, has inadvertently excluded many good people from productive employment. We are, accordingly, going to change the selection standards that screen out all but the most qualified people.

We will also begin devoting special attention to minority employees of limited qualifications to make them genuinely productive in the shortest possible time. Hopefully we can maintain standards of performance throughout. Effective immediately, therefore, all Xerox managers are directed, on an individual basis, to begin this effort, pending a more systematic company-wide revision of standards. Thirdly, we are planning to increase substantially our training of unqualified Negroes, and other minority members.

Although the Project Step Up Program to qualify people for entry level jobs has been successful in the Rochester area,we feel that its scope must be considerably broadened and the entry requirements modified. We are presently planning to incorporate the program into our present hiring process, and to extend it to major Xerox facilities outside Rochester.

The full and unqualified cooperation of all Xerox managers is expected in reaching our minority hiring goals. Corporate Personnel has been given the responsibility for implementing our plans, and for establishing an accountability system through which top management -- beginning immediately -- can regularly assess progress in all divisions, departments and subsidiaries of the corporation.

Today there are 22 million Negroes in the United States. The exclusion of many of them from our society is a malignancy that the nation cannot endure. To include them as integral to the nation, however, will mean even more than the correction of an intolerable injustice. It will also mean the creation of an enormous and affluent market for new products and services, and of an equally enormous pool of manpower to help meet the critical shortages predicted for the future.

We are fully aware, of course, of the progress that Xerox has already made in assisting the civil rights movement.

But it simply has not gone far enough. We must do more because Xerox will not add to the misery of the present condition of most Negroes. It will not condone the waste of a great national resource. It will not compromise the conviction on which the success of this enterprise and of the nation depends.

Joseph C. Wilson C. Peter McColough

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