Harold Bates

Four years before I started employment with Southern Bell, one of AT&T's companies, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, Department of Justice and AT&T, the nation's largest private employer, signed a landmark consent decree to eliminate discriminatory recruiting hiring and promotion practices against women and minorities. This was in 1973 and they had a follow-up consent decree in 1974.

In 1977, I transferred from C&P Telephone Company of Virginia to Southern Bell of Georgia. After going on this journey with me in this book, I ask you, "Did Southern Bell and AT&T live up to that consent decree they signed four years prior with the United States Government?"