(April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979)
A. Philip Randolph (click here) (seated, center) and other leaders of the 1963 March on Washington. (U.S. National Archives)
A. Philip Randolph, whom Martin Luther King, Jr., called “truly the Dean of Negro leaders,” played a crucial role in gaining recognition of African Americans in labor organizations (Papers 4:527). A socialist and a pacifist, Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union, and the Negro American Labor Council (NALC).
The youngest son of a poor preacher deeply committed to racial politics, Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, on 15 April 1889. He graduated from Jacksonville’s Cookman Institute in 1911, relocating to New York City soon afterward. In 1917 Randolph and Chandler Owen founded the Messenger, an African American socialist journal critical of American involvement in World War I.
After the 1925 founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph succeeded in gaining recognition of the union from the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1937. When the union signed its first contract with the company, membership rose to nearly 15,000. In 1941 Randolph threatened a march on Washington, D.C., if the federal government did not address racial discrimination in the defense industry. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in the defense industry and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Randolph also helped to form the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation, which influenced President Harry S. Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed services in 1948....
