E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was a chemical company and began a research program in dyes in 1916 to take advantage of the wartime disruption of German supplies of dyestuffs. The following year, the Jackson Laboratory was established at Deepwater, New Jersey as a major production facility for dyestuffs. The Dyestuffs Department was formally organized in 1921. By the late 1920s the DuPont Company was one of the four major U.S. dye producers and controlled twenty-five percent of the market.

In 1931, the department was absorbed into the Organic Chemicals Department. DuPont's dyestuffs research peaked in the 1950s, with Jackson Lababoratory chemists developing dyes for DuPont's Orlon and Dacron synthetic fibers, and then declined in the mid-1960s due to increased international competition. The DuPont Company restructured its Organic Chemicals Department in 1978 and it was absorbed into the Chemicals, Dyes, and Pigments Department. DuPont left the dye industry completely in 1980.