History
A. Philip Randolph was born April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida. He was one of two sons. His parent's names were Reverend James Williams and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, who were both dependents of slaves.
He and his family moved to Jacksonville in 1891. This was the place where he and his brother attended school. They excelled by being the top in their classes at the Cookman Institute. After school, he was reduced to menial work. In the spring of 1911, he traveled to New York with a friend, hoping to become an actor. He took classes at City College, and bowing to his parents objections to an acting career, switched from drama to politics and economics, soon joining the socialist party. During this time Randolph met his future wife, Lucille Green, a 31 year old widow from Christianburg, Virginia.
Randolph soon met another friend from North Carolina. His name was Chandler Owen. He was studying sociology and political science at Columbia University. They both shared the same ideas and would soon become soap box orators and establish The Messenger, a radical Harlem magazine, in 1917.
He organized The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters which was considered the first serious effort of unionizing the Pullman company. The Pullman company was the most powerful business organization in the country, and it viciously resisted efforts to unionize. Randolph struggled with his company for 12 years. The brotherhood's battles won the admiration of labor and liberal leaders. The American Federation of Labor leadership saw the bitterly anti-communist Brotherhood as a bastion against the influence of communism among the black working class.
They had many setbacks, but the Brotherhood prevailed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal guaranteed workers the right to organize and required corporations to negotiate with unions. In 1935, the Pullman company was forced to sit down with the Brotherhood. Randolph moved to secure formal affiliation with the AFL and was finally granted an international charter. At their convention, there were many disagreements over whether to organize by craft or industry. The conflict led to the expulsion of unions that wanted to organize by industry. Those unions soon formed the Congress of Industrial Organization. In 1937, the Brotherhood, which remained in the AFL, finally obtained a contract with the Pullman Company, the first contract ever between a company and a black union. Randolph emerged as one of the first major black labor leaders in the country.
He was also a spokesperson for African-American rights in the 1940s and 1950s. He is hailed as the dean of American civil rights leaders. He mainly focused his attention on the rising number of blacks on relief and the number of defense industry jobs that were increasing with the war effort heating up. These jobs traditionally excluded blacks. Randolph proposed the march on Washington - a mass action protest to demand change.
Read more about this topic: A. Philip Randolph Career Academy
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