Bro. A. Philip Randolph

Brother Asa Philip Randolph, born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, was one of the most respected leaders of the American Labor Rights and Civil Rights Movements of the twentieth century.  Bro. Randolph was a labor activist, delivering the first victory in US history for Black American workers fighting for fair wages, fair working conditions and benefits against a large American corporation. He was the organizer of the 1941 March on Washington, the threat of which forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), which enforced anti-discrimination in defense industry hiring. In 1947, threatening to pull Black American support for President Truman’s campaign for re-election, President Truman ended formal discrimination in the Armed Forces. Bro. Randolph would continue to fight for workers’ rights until the late 1970’s serving in executive roles within the AFL-CIO. Perhaps, most famously, however, Bro. Randolph is most known as the architect of the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In 1907, Bro. Randolph graduated as the valedictorian of Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, Florida, and worked a series of menial jobs while pursuing a career as an actor. He moved to New York in 1911, and after reading W.E.B DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk he decided to devote his life to fighting for African American equality. In 1914, Bro. Randolph married Lucille E. Green, a Howard University graduate and entrepreneur whose economic support allowed Randolph to pursue civil rights full-time. She is an unsung hero!

In June 1925, a group of Pullman porters, the all-black service staff of the Pullman sleeping cars, approached Bro. Randolph and asked him to lead their new organization, the “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.” Bro. Randolph agreed, and in 1925 he fully established the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Pullman Company was the largest single employer of the African Americans in the nation at the time.  Many of the 10,000 Pullman Porters were college graduates and highly respected in their own communities, yet on the job, they were subjected to low wages, disrespectful treatment, and discriminatory practices. Bro. Randolph led them for ten years, ultimately receiving recognition from the Pullman Company in 1935, as well as, nearly two million dollars in increased wages, a shorter workweek, and overtime pay. Bro. Randolph called it the "first victory of Negro workers over a great industrial corporation." He continued his struggles for economic equality during the 1930s by serving as president of the National Negro Congress.

Bro. Randolph became the most widely known spokesperson for African American working-class interests in the country. In December 1940, with President Franklin Roosevelt refusing to issue an executive order banning discrimination against black workers in the defense industry, Bro. Randolph called for "10,000 loyal Negro American citizens" to march on Washington, D.C. Support grew so quickly that soon he was calling for 100,000 marchers to converge on the capital. Pressed to take action, President Roosevelt issued an executive order on June 25, 1941, six days before the march was to occur, declaring "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin."

After the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1947, Bro. Randolph demanded that the government integrate the armed forces. He founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation and urged young men, both Black and white, to "refuse to cooperate with a Jim Crow conscription service." Threatened with widespread civil disobedience and needing the black vote in his 1948 re-election campaign, President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, ordered an end to military discrimination "as quickly as possible."

Bro. Randolph is credited as the architect of the 1963 March on Washington. This march offered Martin Luther King, Jr. the forum for his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and is credited with creating the momentum that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Bro. Randolph continued to advocate political and economic equality throughout his life. He was one of the founders of the Negro American Labor Council and served as its president from 1960 to 1966. In 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1968, Randolph was named the president of the recently formed A. Philip Randolph Institute, which was established by the AFL-CIO to promote trade unionism in the black community. He would continue to serve on the AFL-CIO Executive Council until 1974.