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This chapter describes the contributions of Julius Chambers and his partners, most particularly Robert Belton, to the LDF's national litigation campaign to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which new law outlawed racial discrimination in the workplace effective July 1965. In October 1965, Chambers filed the nation's first-ever Title VII suit, and soon after filed three additional cases which, when ultimately decided years later, substantially ended overt racial discrimination in American workplaces. These critical victories included Supreme Court triumphs in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) and Albermarle Paper Co. v. Moody (1975), and the Fourth Circuit's Robinson v. Lorillard Corp. (1971). Griggs, recognized as the era's landmark employment ruling, established the "disparate impact" standard for adjudicating employers' use of "intelligence" tests and other pre-employment screening mechanisms. Together, Griggs, Moody, and Robinson did much to define the federal courts' interpretations of Title VII in a fashion that both opened workplaces to black job seekers and offered some compensatory remedy to those who had suffered under racially discriminatory workplace schemes. By these efforts, Chambers, his partners, and the LDF would leave the American workplace forever changed.

The Introduction tells the story of Jonathan Martin, a young, black, professional football player on the Miami Dolphins who checked himself into a mental health institution because of his teammates’ verbal harassment. An older, white player, Richie Incognito, led the harassment that had clear racial and class tinges. But the media missed that the harassment was gender-based because masculine practices, especially in all-male workplaces, are normalized and invisible. The harassing behavior occurred in large part because of Martin’s failure to live up to the image of a tough, masculine, football star. Groups of men in all-male workplaces, the chapter observes, harass men like Martin who they see as weak, in order to police the boundaries of masculinity and assure their own masculine reputations. The chapter notes that the behavior met the proof requirements of an illegal hostile work environment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and argues that expert testimony on masculinities theory can help judges and juries understand the hidden masculine behaviors and structures that result in illegal discrimination.

This chapter introduces the reader to research on masculinities and multidimensional masculinities theory, and discusses generally how this body of research and theory can aid analysis of cases arising under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids employment discrimination based on race, color, gender, national origin, and religion. It examines the origins of masculinities theory and its relationship to workplace behaviors, as well as its potential use in explaining why certain behaviors should constitute sex- or gender-based discrimination. It explains that masculinities theory as a methodology asks readers to shift their perspectives to examine human behavior and organizations through a different lens. The chapter defines masculinities as a complex social structure, the construction of masculine identities through performance, and the performance of masculine practices at work.

The department store movement succeeded in opening this world to African Americans and provided them with the means with which to make claims to middle-class citizenship, but it certainly did not foresee the dramatic decline of these retail institutions. The struggle for racial equity in work and consumption, thus, continues. Racial discrimination in the retail industry persists in ways that are consistent with early forms of discrimination—not hiring African Americans in skilled and status positions, and limited black consumers’ mobility in and access to retail institutions. Discrimination is also shaped by and reflective of the changing nature of American retailing, employment, and consumption in the twenty-first century—in that African Americans are hired in sales vis-à-vis cashiering and denied managerial, supervisory, and executive positions.