Remembering the legacy of A. Phillip Randolph on Labor Day

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In 1919, he became president of the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, a union for black shipyard and dock workers in Virginia that, under pressure from the American Federation of Labor, folded in 1921.

Sought out by a group of Pullman Porters, Randolph got his starring role as the founding president of their union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters on August 25, 1925. The only problem was their employer, the Pullman Company, not only refused to recognize them, but also worked hard to destroy them. Porters, who joined the union in its first year, faced violent intimidation and firings.

After failing to win mediation under the Watson-Parker Railway Labor Act in 1928, Randolph called off a proposed strike on rumors that Pullman had 5000 workers waiting to replace BSCP members and membership plummeted. Congressional amendments to the Railway Labor Act in 1934 to include sleeping car companies and non-operating train personnel, however, recharged the BSCP. According to Melinda Chateauvert’s Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, “The new act removed almost every anti-labor provision of the original 1926 Watson-Parker Act, giving the railroad unions the same bargaining powers other unions would enjoy . . . (68).”

And Randolph definitely used them. In 1935, the Pullman Company began negotiations with the BSCP, eventually resulting in a 1937 contract netting $2 million in pay increases, a shorter workweek and overtime pay. Never one to tolerate racial discrimination, Randolph withdrew BSCP from the AFL, despite a long-time battle for their recognition, when its leadership continually failed to address the inequality in its ranks and, instead, aligned BSCP with the newer and more radical Congress of Industrial Organizations.

It was this track record of bold action and tangible results that gave Randolph the credibility to propose the 1941 March on Washington that got FDR’s attention. But Randolph did not stop at the success of Executive Order 8802. As founder of the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation, Randolph pressed President Harry S. Truman to integrate the military, which was achieved through Executive Order 9981 in 1948.

When the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, Randolph became a vice-president on the Executive Council plus he helped found the Negro American Labor Council in 1959. In 1965, Randolph and his longtime protégé Bayard Rustin, who did the heavy lifting of leading the physical organizing of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which according to its website is “an Organization of Black Trade Unionist to Fight for Racial Equality and Economic Justice.” [sic]

Failing health, however, led to Randolph stepping down as BSCP president in 1968. He was, however, able to extend himself to Jervis Anderson for A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait, published in 1973, before passing away on May 16, 1979 at the age of 90.

“No individual did more to help the poor, the dispossessed and the working class in the United States and around the world than A. Philip Randolph,” Rustin declared upon his mentor’s death. Randolph’s contributions were vast, reverberating in small yet big ways. E.D. Nixon, for example, who helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott, to which Rustin also lent critical strategic assistance, was a one-time Pullman Porter who helped organized BSCP under Randolph’s leadership.

In addition, Randolph himself was hands on with other civil rights activities not directly tied to labor concerns like organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Council’s Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial on May 17, 1957 to encourage federal support of the Brown v. Board of Education decision during Eisenhower’s administration that drew nearly 25,000 demonstrators.

“People should never, ever forget the role that A. Philip Randolph played,” Congressman John Lewis, who was the youngest speaker on the program for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, told The Florida Times-Union recently. “He should be looked at as one of the founding fathers of a new America, a better America.”

Follow Ronda Racha Penrice on Twitter at @RondaRacha.