Executive Order 8802 was an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941. It prohibited ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry, including in companies, unions, and federal agencies. It also set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Executive Order 8802 was the first federal action, though not a law, to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States. It represented the first executive civil rights directive since Reconstruction.

Asa Philip Randolph was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American-led labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a prominent voice. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against racist labor practices helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully maintained pressure, so that President Harry S. Truman proposed a new Civil Rights Act and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 in 1948, promoting fair employment and anti-discrimination policies in federal government hiring, and ending racial segregation in the armed services.