08/19/2025
Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, former EEOC leaders, and agency staff gathered in Washington, D.C. last week to celebrate the EEOC’s 60th anniversary. Speakers reflected on the agency’s work to enforce Federal civil rights laws, it’s impact on American workers, and a continued commitment to addressing modern challenges.
Acting Chair Lucas reflected on the agency’s beginning, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 called forth the opening of our agency. A year later, the EEOC opened its doors for the first time, turning law back into life, and providing pivotal leadership working to untangle centuries of painful employment discrimination…we expected around 2,000 charges that year and instead processed nearly 9,000. As we’ve done time and time again, we faced that challenge head on, pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, and got to work protecting the American worker.”
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the EEOC had limited enforcement powers. As a result, some employers didn’t take the EEOC seriously. Long time employee and current Associate General Counsel, Gwendolyn Young Reams, described a s*x discrimination case from the 1970s where a large employer tried to overwhelm the EEOC by sending truckloads of documents to our docks, daily. “Their intention was to make us go away. Instead, we dug in.” As a result, the employer agreed to pay $45 million in back pay and wage adjustments to thousands of women.
During a panel discussion, Dexter Brooks, former associate director of EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations, highlighted effective Federal partnerships. He touted the ability to pool limited resources to create greater change. Mr. Brooks encouraged EEOC’s staff and other civil rights workers to remain resilient. “Keep the goal in mind. Learn from the past but don’t live there. Keep moving forward.”
Nicole St. Germain, lead outreach and education coordinator in the EEOC Los Angeles District, said the outreach program allows the EEOC to tell the public who we are and what we do, where they are and in ways that are accessible to them. Her message to EEOC colleagues in the room and watching online, "Find joy in the small steps. Remember your why. Because of you, civil rights has a brighter future."
Acting Chair Lucas closed the program by reminding attendees of the continued need for the EEOC’s services and how the agency’s work relates to our country’s founding principles that each person is “created equal” and endowed with inherent dignity, and therefore should be judged on merit and individual skill alone, not the color of their skin. “For 60 years, the EEOC has worked to uphold the vision that all people deserve equal opportunity in the workplace. That mission remains as urgent today as it was when we first opened our doors. Fact patterns may have changed. And although our country has made tremendous strides, bias still lives in the human heart and we’re going to be there to attack it in any iteration and in every fact pattern that it comes up in.”
Do you want to learn more about EEO laws and how the EEOC has worked to enforce the laws through six decades? Visit our website our history page: www.EEOC.gov/History.
