The nature of race-based employment discrimination and its proper solution continue to be topics of much public debate. Scarce, however, is the kind of dispassionate scholarly treatment that lends a helpful long-range perspective on the matter. In this welcome study, Paul D. Moreno retraces the legal and political responses to racial bias in America’s workplaces.

From Direct Action to Affirmative Action makes clear that the demand for preferential employment practices originated decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By casting the development of modern national policy in a broader historical context, it brings depth and nuance to an understanding of this important area of civil rights.