The March on Washington Movement
The Life and Legacy of Asa Philip Randolph
Issue #97: American History August 2, 2022
Almost everyone has heard of the 1963 “March on Washington for Justice and Jobs” where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. (Of course, many people forget the other main points of the speech, such as reminding America about the check that came back because of “insufficient funds…”)
However, more than two decades before that momentous event was the “March on Washington Movement” led by A. Philip Randolph (1889 - 1979), one of the foremost civil and labor rights activists in the early to mid-twentieth century.
Asa Philip Randolph was born in Florida to Rev. James Randolph and Elizabeth Randolph. His parents stressed the importance of education, class-consciousness, and defending oneself, physically if necessary.
After moving to New York City and studying the writings of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Randolph became an anti-war socialist who railed against the inequalities experienced by the Negro workers. Over the next twenty years, Randolph became the best-known spokesman for the interests of the Black working class in the United States.
In 1925, the all-Black group of Pullman porters who worked the Pullman sleeping train cars nationwide asked Randolph to lead their new organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Because Randolph already had knowledge of the union efforts going on in the country and was not a Pullman employee so couldn’t be fired, he was able, over a ten-year period, to organize the Pullman porters to become a certified collective bargaining agent in 1935.
Prior to the United States’ entry into WWII, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to issue an executive order banning discrimination against Black workers in the defense industry. In response, Randolph called for 10,000 loyal Negro American citizens to march on Washington, D.C. on July 1, 1941, as a protest. Eventually, the number requested to join the march grew to 100,000, and on June 25, 1941, just six days before the date of the proposed march, President Roosevelt issued the requested executive order. He also set up an oversight agency, the Fair Employment Practices Commission.
In 1947, President Harry Truman oversaw the passage of the Selective Service Act, after which Randolph made a demand that the United States armed forces be desegregated. Randolph urged Black and white young men to “refuse to cooperate with a Jim Crow Conscription service” and founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation. By 1948, President Truman realized there was the potential for widespread civil disobedience and that he needed the Black vote for the upcoming presidential election. On June 26, 1948, President Truman issued an executive order to end military discrimination “as soon as possible.”
These successful initiatives in the 1940s came to be known as the “March on Washington Movement (MOWM)” and helped to convince future civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s that nonviolent protests and mass demonstrations were the best way to exert public pressure for change.
Although the MOWM was the model for the 1963 March on Washington, for which Randolph was appointed as chair, the NAACP began to temper its support because of fears of civil disobedience incidents.
Randolph was made a vice-president of the AFL-CIO in 1955 and was one of the founders of the Negro American Labor Council. President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Randolph the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Randolph continued to push for Black participation and equality in trade unions and established the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
The militant Black-only politics of the MOWM influenced the rise of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s.
What do you know and/or remember about A. Philip Randolph? Did you learn anything new? Let us know in the comments.
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