Asa Philips Randolph was a legendary African-American civil rights leader born on April 15, 1889, and died on May 16, 1979. He was known to be a labor union organizer and a social justice advocate. He played a major part in enhancing the rights of African Americans and employers in the United States during the 20th century.
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the
A. Philips Randolph
highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess
Asa Philip Randolph was born On April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, by a Methodist preacher. He grew up in Jacksonville and was exposed to racial discrimination and inequality, profoundly influencing his activism. He and his brothers attended Cookman Institute in Jacksonville, Florida’s first black School, built during Reconstruction, and he graduated in 1907. He later moved to Harlem in 1911 and
attended City College of New York and New York University, where he worked as an elevator operator.
Randolph’s was rewarded for his commitment to the socialist movement and got a job in the Brotherhood of Labor, a Black labor organization. He married Lucille Green, a young widow and Howard University graduate who managed a beauty shop in the same building where he worked in 1914.
Justice is never given; it is exacted, and the struggle must be continuous for freedom
A. Philips Randolph
is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels
of human, social, economic, political, and religious relationship”
In 1915, Philip Randolph met a close friend named Chandler Owen. He was a law student and socialist thinker, just like Randolph. They joined the Socialist Party and published a magazine called Hotel Messenger, which was later renamed The Messanger. This book was published to enhance their socialist ideal and recruit their fellow African Americans to the cause. Randolph and Owen were arrested and briefly imprisoned for sedition in 1918 for publicly criticizing Woodrow Wilson’s presidential government and its tactics during World War I.
Randolph, in the labor movement, became the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ (BSCP) leader. This was the first union with a significant African-American membership, founded in 1925. The Pullman Company’s porters and maids’ working conditions and pay were to be improved by this union. In the fight for worker rights and racial equality, the BSCP’s victorious campaign against the Pullman Company was a
groundbreaking win.
Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice,
Asa Philips Randolph
equality of opportunity in industry, labor unions, schools and colleges, government,
politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges,
duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom
He assisted the civil rights movement and believed that economic equality was linked to racial equity. He instituted the March on Washington (MOWM) in 1941. He persuaded President Roosevelt in 1942 to stop discrimination in wartime industry and President Truman in 1948 to compel armed forces integration. Randolph advocated a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, where he played a major role in organizing the “I Have a Dream,” which was addressed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His ability to elicit the best in people enabled the other civil rights leaders to put aside personal rivalries and collaborate to arrange the largest peaceful demonstration in American history.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered this well-known “I Have a Dream” speech, address at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, which he helped organize in a big way.