A. Philip Randolph is known for his co-leadership of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where over 250,000 protesters marched for an end to segregation in public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education and the right to vote.
What many people do not know is that 22 years earlier, on January 25th, 1941, A Philip Randolph, as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, called for a massive protest march in Washington to end racial segregation and discriminatory hiring in WWII defense industries and the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of Black men were prepared to march. This resulted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 8802 that banned discrimination in defense contracts and created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Randolph then called off the march- proving that mass economic and political pressure could force federal action on civil rights, laying the groundwork for the civil rights movement that followed.
Twenty years before that, Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, the first successful Black led labor union. This union served porters working on the Pullman Company railroads. Porters were subjected to poor working conditions including long hours on little sleep, low wages and dehumanizing treatment Although it took twelve years, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was successful in achieving higher wages for workers, a shorter work month, and the right to a hearing before discharge.
Philips proved to be a talented and tenacious organizer over and over again. In addition to his role as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and as a civil rights leader, Randolph contributed to the labor movement as the vice-president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1955 and served on the council until 1974.
The A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago was closed for renovations. But we will make sure to visit it in the future.
