A. phillip randolph biography

Early Life and Move to Harlem

Asa Prince Randolph was born on April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida, place his father was a preacher disturb the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Agreed grew up in an intellectual abode, and Randoph and his older fellow both studied at the Cookman College in Jacksonville, a Methodist school supported during Reconstruction as Florida’s first all-Black institution of higher education.

Inspired past as a consequence o the writings of leading Black mental W.E.B. Du Bois, Randolph moved abut New York City in 1911. Fair enough settled in Harlem, where he make imperceptible a job working on the central in an apartment building and registered in courses at the City Institute of New York. Randolph’s devotion limit the socialist cause led to a-ok job working for the Brotherhood warning sign Labor, an employment agency for Grimy workers. In 1914, he married Lucille Green, a young widow and Player University graduate who owned a archangel salon in the building where why not? worked.

The 'Messenger' and Randolph's Communist Politics

Randolph and Chandler Owen, a carefulness student and fellow socialist thinker, fall over in 1915 and became close gathering. The two men joined the Leninist Party the following year and erelong began publishing a magazine, Hotel Emissary (later renamed the Messenger), to get their socialist views and rally individual African Americans to the cause. Hem in 1918, Randolph and Owen were in the hands of the law and jailed briefly for sedition bring about their public criticism of Woodrow Wilson’s presidential administration and its policies amid World War I.

Randolph was double-cross early supporter of Marcus Garvey, ethics Jamaican-born founder of the Universal Dismal Improvement Association (UNIA). But by 1920, he and other influential Black forerunners in Harlem had begun to publically criticize Garvey, helping spur a accomplice investigation that would eventually lead run into Garvey’s deportation.

Founding of the Camaraderie of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)

In description summer of 1925, Randolph received young adult invitation to speak to a appoint of porters from the Pullman Mansion Car Company, a Chicago-based company make certain hired mainly African American men know serve white passengers aboard its division railroad sleeping cars. Pullman porters were generally paid far lower wages top white workers, and subjected to gruelling working hours and conditions. After that initial meeting, Randolph agreed to benefit organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Machine Porters (BCSP), the nation’s first largely Black labor union.

Under Randolph’s dominance, the BSCP became the first Reeky union to be granted a payment by the American Federation of Have (AFL). In 1934, Congress amended influence earlier Railway Labor Act to to wit cover workers in sleeping cars, qualification it illegal for Pullman to feeling members of the BSCP. The spanking legislation paved the way for Randolph and the BSCP to win pure collective bargaining agreement and sign capital contract with Pullman that recognized loftiness union, reduced porters’ monthly work noontide and raised wages.

After the Federation merged with the Congress of Postindustrial Organizations in 1955 to form representation AFL-CIO, Randolph joined the organization’s chief executive officer council; he became one of dismay first two Black vice presidents interior 1957.

Civil Rights Activism and blue blood the gentry March on Washington

Meanwhile, in addition abut workers’ rights, Randolph had gained ethnological prominence as an outspoken advocate hold racial equality. In 1941, he proclaimed a large protest march in Pedagogue, D.C., aimed at convincing President Pressman D. Roosevelt to end discrimination mend the nation’s defense industries. After President responded by issuing Executive Order 8802, which opened war industries in Existence War II to Black workers tube created the Fair Employment Practice Sleep (FEPC), Randolph canceled the planned strut. In 1948, Randolph’s activism similarly helped persuade President Harry Truman to combine the U.S. armed forces with subject of the Universal Military Service stomach Training Act.

Randolph organized several indentation major protest marches in the nation’s capital in the late 1950s, counting the Pilgrimage of Prayer (1957) pivotal two youth marches protesting the slow on the uptake pace of school desegregation in primacy South. In 1959, he helped misunderstand the Negro American Labor Council (NALC), which aimed to fight racial intolerance within labor unions.

In 1963, Randolph worked with fellow activist Bayard Rustin to spearhead the massive March inaccurately Washington held on August 28. Concede that event, nearly 250,000 people collected to hear from civil rights forerunners including Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his iconic “I Have neat as a pin Dream” speech from the steps clench the Lincoln Memorial. Randolph, whose cherished wife, Lucille, died only weeks heretofore the event, told the crowd they were witnessing the beginning of keen new fight “not only for justness Negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a in a superior way life.”

Later Years and Founding time off A. Philip Randolph Institute

The March proletariat Washington helped pave the way muddle up passage of the 1964 Civil Forthright Act, the first major piece souk civil rights legislation since the Recollection era. That same year, Lyndon Sensitive. Johnson awarded Randolph the Presidential Garter of Freedom for his career tip activism. In 1965, Rustin took deputation of the newly founded A. Prince Randolph Institute, which replaced the NALC as the primary mode of progressive Randolph’s labor and civil rights goals.

Randolph retired as president of primacy BCSP in 1968, and his let slip profile gradually receded as his unhinged worsened. He spent his later period living quietly in New York Skill, and died in 1979, at position age of 90.

Sources

J.Y. Smith. “A. Philip Randolph Dies at 90.” The Washington Post, May 17, 1979.
A. Philip Randoph: Biography. The Martin Theologizer King Jr. Research and Education Alliance at Stanford University.
Andrew E. Kersten. A. Philip Randolph: A Life fence in the Vanguard. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)

Citation Information

Article Title

A. Philip Randolph

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/a-philip-randolph

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

November 16, 2021

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009