The Diversity Index

3 A Plan for Progress

ON MARCH 22, 1961, AT 6:35 A.M., FIVE BLACK EMPLOYEES AT Lockheed Aircraft’s facility in Marietta, Georgia, tried to eat breakfast in the white cafeteria. The cafeteria workers closed down the line. The black employees entered another line. The food workers closed down that line also, as they had been instructed to do by Lockheed’s management. The black employees retreated to the black cafeteria where they told everyone else in the cafeteria what had happened to them. The anger over segregated eating facilities resulted in “considerable unrest,” according to Eugene Mattison, Lockheed’s head of labor relations.¹

Mattison and Lockheed’s president, James Carmichael, met with the black employees in their lawyer’s office. “Any ...