White House Statement on Charges of Unfair Labor Practices on Flood Control Projects on the Lower Mississippi River.
CHARGES HAVE BEEN laid before the President that some of the private contractors doing work for the Government on flood control projects on the lower Mississippi River are paying unreasonably low wages to Negro employees, overcharging the men at the contractors' commissaries, keeping their camps in a very unsanitary condition and in some cases, resorting to physical violence in the treatment of the men.
The president has requested Dr. Robert R. Moton, head of Tuskegee Institute, Judge James A. Cobb of Washington, D.C., and Mr. Eugene Kinckle Jones, executive secretary of the Urban League of New York City, representing the Negro race, and Lt. Col. U. S. Grant, representing the United States Army, to make a thorough and impartial inquiry as promptly as possible.
He has directed the members of the commission to proceed at their earliest convenience to the places where the construction work is being carried on by these contractors and to report to him on the facts as determined by their investigation immediately upon its conclusion.
Note: On August 22, 1932, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent the President a report detailing numerous labor abuses in the camps maintained by the contractors doing flood control work on the lower Mississippi. The Chief of Engineers of the War Department asked the Mississippi River Commission to investigate and by October 26, the investigation was well under way. The President's commission, as outlined in the statement, was never funded and made no investigation. In February 1933, contracts were made conditional on compliance with new labor and sanitary regulations prescribed by the Chief of Engineers.
Herbert Hoover, White House Statement on Charges of Unfair Labor Practices on Flood Control Projects on the Lower Mississippi River. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208004