A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph chose not to use the clergy, education or politics as his path to leadership. Instead, he established himself as a labor leader who for 50 years worked tirelessly to keep the interests of black workers at the forefront of the racial agenda.

Randolph was the authoritative black voice in the labor movement in the 1930s, as he believed that working class blacks — not elite or wealthy blacks — were the best hope for progress for African Americans.

“A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess,” said Randolph, a Crescent City, Florida native and son of a Methodist preacher.

Randolph is best known as the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and was elected president of the predominately black labor union in 1925. The railroads had expanded in the early 1900s and the Pullman Company, which manufactured railroad cars and operated them on most of the country’s railroads, was a major employer of black railroad workers.

Although Pullman Company workers had relatively good jobs, they endured poor working conditions and were underpaid. Under Randolph’s leadership, the BSCP was able to enroll more than half of the workers into the union. In the 1930s, Randolph led negotiations between the BSCP and the Pullman Company that led to a new contract in which workers gained $2 million in pay increases, a shorter workweek and overtime pay.

Shortly after World War II, Randolph founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation, which led President Harry S. Truman to issue an Executive Order in 1948 banning segregation in the armed forces. In 1960, he was named the first president of the Negro American Labor Council, which he helped form to fight discrimination within the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).  

A close ally of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Randolph was the lead organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, in which more than 200,000 people descended on the nation’s capital to demonstrate support for civil rights policies for blacks.

Nothing Little Counts

“We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs,” Randolph said. “They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions. Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.”

Soon after the March on Washington, Randolph’s health began to deteriorate. However, in 1965 he formed the A. Philip Randolph Institute in Washington, D.C., where community leaders gathered to study the causes of poverty.

Known as “Mr. Black Labor,” Randolph died in 1979 at age 90 and is buried in New York City. His wife, the former Lucille Campbell Green, with whom he was married for 50 years, died in 1963. The couple had no children.