A. Philip Randolph
"It is our fervent plea for strong voices to be raised, from all
areas of our society, out of varying traditions and interests, to
arouse the conscience of our land."
Asa Philip Randolph, trade unionist and African-American civil
rights leader, was born in Crescent City, Florida, on April 15,
1889, the son of a Methodist minister. He became involved in labor
organizing while a student in New York, and established a small
union of elevator operators. With the U.S. entrance into World War I
in 1917, he co-founded the Messenger, a magazine that advocated
greater opportunities for African Americans in the armed forces. In
the 1920s, he helped establish a union of Pullman railway car
porters, which under his continuing leadership grew into the first
successful African-American trade union. In 1939, he withdrew the
union from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), when it failed to
fight discrimination in its ranks. In 1941, he planned the March on
Washington Movement in protest of racial discrimination in
employment, leading President Franklin D. Roosevelt to set up the
Fair Employment Practices Committee. After the war, he founded the
League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military
Segregation, which contributed significantly to President Harry S.
Truman's decision to desegregate the armed forces in 1948. In 1955,
Randolph was made vice president of the nation's massive new labor
federation, the AFL-CIO. Highly influential in the African-American
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, he was the director of
Martin Luther King's landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom. Randolph retired from public life in 1968 after over forty
years as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He
died in 1979. |
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