Pennsylvania Fair Employment Practice Commission

Following allegations of employment discrimination in Pennsylvania by a member of the state House of Representatives in 1945, an extensive research survey conducted in 1952 by the Governor-appointed Industrial Race Relations Commission found that 9 of 10 firms surveyed in Pennsylvania practiced employment discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin. In 1948, the Philadelphia Committee on Equal Job Opportunity (CEJO) established the State Council for a Pennsylvania Fair Employment Practices Commission to lobby the state government to establish a fair employment practices commission, leading eventually to the Pennsylvania Fair Employment Practice Commission, established in 1955. In 1961 it was renamed the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, when its authority was expanded to encompass a wider range of discrimination issues and the administration of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act and the Pennsylvania Fair Educational Opportunities Act.