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

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Randolph’s “Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense” is a highly rhetorical document consisting of a large number of short paragraphs and sentences that make his purpose absolutely clear. He sweeps his reader along with repetition and exclamations (“What a dilemma! What a runaround! What a disgrace!”) and such literary devices as alliteration (“deepest disappointments and direst defeats … dreadful days of destruction and disaster to democracy”)—all perhaps reflecting his early theatrical background. He announces his purpose in the opening paragraph of his address, where he says, “We call upon you to fight for jobs in National Defense. We call upon you to struggle for the integration of Negroes in the armed forces.” He then condemns “Jim-Crowism,” a reference to the pattern of discrimination and segregation that had existed since the nineteenth century and that kept African Americans in inferior social and economic positions; the phrase Jim Crow was taken from the name of a character in a popular nineteenth-century minstrel show.

Randolph stresses his view of the black employment situation as a “crisis,” indeed, a “crisis of democracy.” He goes on to note that African Americans are being systematically denied employment in the defense industries and that they are segregated in the U.S. military. Randolph was, of course, correct. In the early decades of the twentieth century, African Americans served primarily in menial and service jobs in the military. In the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, for example, African Americans were pushed into the Steward’s Branch, where they worked as cooks and waiters in officers’ mess halls. During World War II they fought in segregated units; the few black officers commanded segregated African American units. Many military officers argued that integrating units, and thus having blacks and whites serve side by side, would result in conflict and low morale. Randolph then goes on to point out that African American workers were caught on the horns of a dilemma: They could not get jobs because there were not members of unions, and they could not gain union membership because they were without jobs.

Midway into the essay, Randolph begins to express hope that the situation can be remedied; he foresees black Americans rising from their current position to new heights of achievement in the “struggle for freedom and justice in Government, in industry, in labor unions, education, social service, religion, and culture.” He then asserts that African Americans, through “their own power for self-liberation,” can break down “barriers of discrimination” and slay the “deadly serpent of race hatred” in the military, government, labor unions, and industry. Here, Randolph calls for efforts to provide unskilled African American workers with job training that will enable them to make a contribution.

Randolph then makes explicit what he wants: not just an end to discrimination but, more specifically, an executive order from the president that will put an end to discrimination in the defense industry and the military. In the following brief paragraphs, he notes that efforts on the part of the black community to gain jobs will not be easy and will require money and sacrifice. He calls on African Americans to take action, urging them to “build a mammoth machine of mass action” and to “harness and hitch” their power. He then arrives at his key goal: the organization of a march on Washington to demand economic equality. Randolph asserts that such a march will “shake up white America” and “shake up official Washington.” Further, the massing of thousands of black demonstrators will give encouragement not only to African Americans but also to “our white friends” who fight for justice by the side of African Americans.

Randolph next takes up a potential objection to the proposed march on Washington. Critics would argue that such a march at such a time, with war looming, might affect national unity. Randolph rejects this argument, arguing instead that “we believe in national unity which recognizes equal opportunity of black and white citizens.” The paragraph goes on to reject all forms of dictatorship, including Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, and to emphasize that African Americans are “loyal, patriotic Americans all.” Interestingly, early in his career, during World War I, Randolph had been arrested for breaking the 1917 Espionage Act because of the left-wing Socialist ideals he espoused in the journal he founded, The Messenger. By the late 1930s Randolph was muting his Socialist beliefs, and here he makes clear that he regards the Communist Soviet Union as a dictatorship.

In the final paragraphs Randolph sums up his views. He states that American democracy would be a “hollow mockery” if it failed to protect its protectors and to extend equality of opportunity to all citizens, black and white. He again calls on President Roosevelt to end “Jim-Crowism” in the military and in the defense industry and closes by stating that if the federal government is guilty of discrimination, it has forfeited the right to take industry and the labor unions to task for the same discrimination.