Black History Month: Daily Updates

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) American labor unionist, civil rights activist

A. Philip Randolph was one of the most influential African American leaders of the twentieth century. From 1917 until his death on May 16, 1979, Randolph worked as a labor organizer, a journalist, and a civil rights leader.

Raised in Jacksonville, Florida, Asa Philip Randoloph excelled in his studies at the only public school open to Black students in the state. While his first passions were drama and literature, Randolph found not only inspiration but a call to activism in W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk. 

Alan Gevinson writes: “Throughout his career, Randolph believed that moral objectives of equality and justice could be secured only through fundamental changes in the economic structure of American society. He insisted that civil rights legislation by itself would not solve deeply rooted inequities in American life and that African Americans would never lose their status as second-class citizens until opportunities for economic and educational advancement were guaranteed to all on an equal basis. In pursuance of that perspective, he successfully challenged U.S. presidents and persuaded them to support his agenda.”

The AFL-CIO, for which Randolph served as vice-president, pays tribute to the labor union leader, summarizing his contributions:

A. Philip Randolph brought the gospel of trade unionism to millions of African American households. Randolph led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and served as the organization's first president. Randolph directed the March on Washington movement to end employment discrimination in the defense industry and a national civil disobedience campaign to ban segregation in the armed forces. The nonviolent protest and mass action effort inspired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1964, A. Philip Randolph received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson.

In Their Words

"The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.”

“Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.”

"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.”

Learn More

LISTEN: The Most Dangerous Negro in America - Black History Bootcamp (42 min)

WATCH: A Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom - California Newsreel (2 min)

READ:  “A. Philip Randolph at the National Press Club, August 26, 1963” - Alan Gevinson, Special Assistant to the Chief, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Library of Congress