A. Philip Randolph: “Call to Negro America to March on Washington”

About the Author

Asa Philip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, the son of a Methodist minister. After graduating as valedictorian of his high school class in 1907, he moved to New York City with the early goal of becoming an actor; in Harlem, he organized a Shakespearean society and performed the lead role in several of Shakespeare’s plays. During the 1910s he became a Socialist and began his earliest involvement in trade unionism. Along with his close friend and collaborator, Chandler Owen, he founded and edited The Messenger, a radical journal that espoused Socialism and trade unionism and urged African Americans to resist the military draft after the United States entered World War I.

During the 1920s Randolph’s involvement in trade unionism intensified, and in 1925 he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black trade union. By the mid-1930s the union had over seven thousand members. For a decade Randolph and the union carried on bitter negotiations with the Pullman Company, which operated the sleeping and dining railroad cars on which black porters and maids worked—often for low wages, with no overtime pay. Finally, in 1935, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was certified as the union that would represent the Pullman employees. Two years later the union reached an agreement with Pullman that provided workers with significant wage increases, overtime pay, and a shorter work week. Meanwhile, in 1936, Randolph was named the first president of the National Negro Congress.

In January 1941, as U.S. industrial output was increasing with the growing threat of American involvement in World War II, Randolph issued a call for a march on Washington, D.C., to demand equality of opportunity in the defense industries and in the U.S. military. He met with President Franklin Roosevelt in June of that year; as a result of that meeting, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which desegregated the defense industries and the federal government. After the war, Randolph, in concert with other black leaders, established the Committee against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training. In large part as a result of Randolph’s efforts, in 1948 President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military. In 1950 Randolph founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations. Later, in 1963, he was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. With his velvety baritone voice, Randolph was often the voice of black America on television and the radio as the struggle for civil rights continued throughout the 1960s. History came full circle when Amtrak, the organization that operates the U.S. passenger rail system, named one of its deluxe sleeping cars in Randolph’s honor. Randolph died at the age of ninety on May 16, 1979, in New York City.