You’ve probably heard the term intersectionality tossed around in HR meetings or on social media. It sounds like academic jargon, but the concept actually exploded out of a very real, very frustrating legal battle in the mid-70s. Honestly, if you want to understand why our current legal system sometimes struggles to protect people who don't fit into neat little boxes, you have to look at DeGraffenreid v. General Motors.
It’s a story about five Black women, a car plant in St. Louis, and a judge who basically told them they couldn't exist as both Black and female at the same time in the eyes of the law.
The "Last Hired, First Fired" Trap
Back in the early 1970s, General Motors (GM) operated a massive assembly plant in St. Louis. Like many industrial giants of the era, their hiring history was... well, let’s just say it wasn't great. Before 1964, they barely hired Black people for anything other than janitorial work. And they didn't hire women for the assembly line at all until 1970.
Then the 1974 recession hit.
When the economy tanked, GM did what most union shops did: they started layoffs based on seniority. If you were the last one through the door, you were the first one out. This is known as the "last hired, first fired" policy. On the surface, it looks neutral. It's just math, right?
But for the five plaintiffs—Emma DeGraffenreid, Brenda Hines, Alberta Chapman, Brenda Hollis, and Patricia Bell—the math was rigged. Because GM hadn't hired Black women until 1970, none of them had enough seniority to survive the layoffs. Every single Black woman hired after 1970 was cut.
The Legal Wall: You Can't Be Both
In 1976, these women sued. They argued that GM’s past discrimination (not hiring Black women for decades) created a situation where the "neutral" seniority system was actually targeted. They weren't just saying GM hated Black people, and they weren't just saying GM hated women. They were saying GM discriminated against Black women specifically.
Here is where things got weird.
Judge H. Kenneth Wangelin looked at their claim and basically threw a "does not compute" error. He famously ruled that the plaintiffs could not combine their race and sex claims into one "super-remedy."
His logic was basically a checklist:
- Is GM discriminating against Black people? No, because they hire Black men for the assembly line.
- Is GM discriminating against women? No, because they hire white women for the front office.
Because the company could point to Black men in the back and white women in the front, the judge decided there was no discrimination happening. He literally wrote that providing a special category for Black women would be "beyond the scope" of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Basically, the court forced them to choose. You can be Black, or you can be a woman. You can't be both.
Why This Case Bothered Kimberlé Crenshaw
Years later, a legal scholar named Kimberlé Crenshaw came across this case while she was a student. She realized that the law was acting like a traffic intersection where accidents happen.
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If you're standing in the middle of an intersection and you get hit by a car coming from the "race" road and another car coming from the "gender" road, it doesn't matter which one hit you first. You're still hurt. But the court in DeGraffenreid was trying to say that since the race road was clear for some people and the gender road was clear for others, no accident could have possibly happened to you.
This realization is what led Crenshaw to coin the term "intersectionality" in 1989. She used DeGraffenreid v. General Motors as the primary example of how the law fails when it treats identity like a buffet where you can only pick one item.
The Reality of the St. Louis Plant
To give you an idea of how stark this was, look at the numbers before 1970:
- GM had one Black female employee. Just one. She was a janitor.
- White women worked in the "cushion room" (sewing seats) but were kept away from the heavy machinery.
- Black men worked the heavy assembly lines.
When the 1970s rolled around and GM finally started hiring Black women for the production lines, they were essentially starting from zero seniority. So, when the layoffs happened in '74, the "last hired, first fired" rule acted like a surgical strike against Black women.
The court didn't see the "cushion room" for white women or the "assembly line" for Black men as evidence of a segregated workforce. They saw it as evidence of inclusion. Sorta wild when you think about it today.
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Why We Are Still Talking About This in 2026
You might think, "Okay, that was fifty years ago. Surely we've fixed this?"
Kinda. But also, not really.
While legal standards have evolved, "intersectional" claims are still notoriously hard to win in court. Many judges still prefer "single-axis" claims because they are cleaner. If you're a Black woman facing harassment, a lawyer might still tell you to pick the "stronger" horse—either race or gender—rather than trying to explain how the two are inseparable in your experience.
The DeGraffenreid case remains a foundational lesson for anyone in business, law, or HR. It’s the "What Not To Do" guide for diversity and inclusion.
Actionable Takeaways for Today
If you’re a business owner or a manager, there are real lessons here that go beyond just knowing history.
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- Check your "Neutral" Policies: The "last hired, first fired" rule was technically neutral, but it had a 100% layoff rate for a specific demographic. Whenever you implement a broad policy, run the numbers. Does it disproportionately wipe out a specific group?
- Stop Using Averages: If your company is 50% women and 20% people of color, that sounds great on paper. But if all the women are white and in the office, and all the people of color are men and in the warehouse, you haven't actually integrated. You've just siloed.
- Listen to Specific Experiences: When an employee brings up an issue, don't try to "simplify" it. If someone says they feel sidelined as a woman of color, don't just look at how your white female employees are doing. Their experience isn't the same.
- Review Seniority Systems: In modern tech or corporate environments, seniority often dictates who gets the best projects or the most flexibility. If your hiring only became diverse in the last three years, a strict seniority system will keep those new hires at the bottom of the ladder indefinitely.
The DeGraffenreid plaintiffs didn't win their case, but they changed how we think about identity forever. They proved that if the law doesn't see you as a whole person, it can't actually protect you.
To see how these principles apply to modern workplace structures, you can audit your own company's retention data by demographic intersections rather than just broad categories like "Gender" or "Ethnicity."