RANDOLPH, A. PHILIP
Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889–May 16, 1979) was a civil rights leader and the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The younger of two sons, Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, to Elizabeth Robinson and James William Randolph, an itinerant African Methodist Episcopal preacher. Randolph graduated from Cookman Institute (later Bethune-Cookman College) in Jacksonville in 1909. Unable to find any but manual labor jobs in the South, Randolph left for New York in 1911. There he came under the influence of Socialists and the International Workers of the World. He took speech lessons, which accounted for his Oxford English speaking style and soon became a soapbox orator, propagandizing on behalf of black unionism and Socialism, beliefs to which he adhered for the rest of his life. In 1913 he married Lucille Campbell Green, whose beauty shop earnings supported his subsequent undertakings.
Randolph opposed the entry of the United States into World War I, and in 1917 he began publishing
the Messenger, in which he argued that since 99 percent of African Americans were workers their logical affiliation should be with the Socialist Party. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, government repression decimated the Messenger radical group and left Randolph a confirmed anti-Communist. With declining Socialist support for the Messenger, Randolph became more conservative.
In 1925 Randolph was invited to organize the Pullman Company railroad porters, the one occupation in which African Americans held a near monopoly. It was only after the Great Depression brought Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal to power that Randolph succeeded in gaining recognition for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1935 and the Pullman Company in 1937. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and National Labor Relations Act (1935), which guaranteed labor the right to organize and select its own bargaining agent without interference from the employer,
enabled Randolph to achieve legitimacy for the union. Even before formal recognition of the BSCP by the AFL, Randolph used AFL conventions to denounce racism in the labor movement.
In the depths of the Depression the agreement between Pullman and the porters' union brought some $2 million in income to the porters and their families and prominence for Randolph in both the black and white communities. In 1935 Randolph became president of the National Negro Congress (NNC), an umbrella organization established to help African Americans cope with the economic distress of the Depression. Randolph resigned in 1940, charging that the NNC was Communistdominated.
By then defense preparations were pulling the country out of the Depression. Blacks, however, denied the opportunity to apply for defense jobs because of racial discrimination, remained disproportionately unemployed. When the Roosevelt administration proved impervious to their entreaties, Randolph conceived the idea of a mass march of African Americans on Washington to demand defense jobs and training. Realizing that the administration could not persuade Randolph to call off the march, scheduled for July 1, 1941, without some tangible gain, Roosevelt issued an executive order that created a temporary wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee, in exchange for which Randolph agreed to cancel the march. Uncertain how many African Americans would actually participate, Randolph was elated at the success of his strategy, and decided to keep his organization, the March on Washington Movement, intact to promote nonviolent civil disobedience in the fight for civil rights.
During the Cold War, Randolph counseled young black men to refuse to register or be drafted into a segregated military establishment. President Harry Truman capitulated, integrating the armed services in 1948. Next, in an effort to speed implementation of the Supreme Court school desegregation decision of 1954, Randolph mounted a prayer pilgrimage in 1957 and two youth marches for integrated schools in the nation's capital in 1958 and 1959. Becoming one of the AFL's two black vice presidents when the federation merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1955, Randolph launched an all-black labor group, the Negro American Labor Council in 1959 to fight racism within the labor movement. In 1963 Randolph proposed a march on Washington for jobs and freedom to be led by a coalition of civil rights organizations, major religious denominations, and the United Auto Workers. Although it marked the high point of the civil rights movement, the integrated march was somewhat marred for Randolph by his wife's death three months earlier. Afterwards the civil rights coalition dissolved into wrangling over prestige, financial contributions, and Black Power separatism. Randolph retired in 1968, after founding the A. Philip Randolph Institute in 1964 to carry on his ideas and methods.
Taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the Great Depression to form the nation's first black union, Randolph's unique contribution was promotion of nonviolent civil disobedience and a symbiotic relationship between the American labor movement and the cause of racial justice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. 1986.
Bates, Beth Tompkins. Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925–1945. 2001.
Harris, William H. Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925–37. 1991.
Pfeffer, Paula F. A. Philip Randolph: Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. 1990.
Randolph, A. Philip. The Papers of A. Philip Randolph, edited by John H. Bracey, Jr., and August Meier. 1990.
Randolph, A. Philip. Reminiscences. Columbia Oral History Research Office. Columbia University, New York.
