A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph ( born April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida, † May 16, 1979 ) was an American socialist who was active in the labor movement and the civil rights movement.
Life
He was born in Crescent City, Florida. His father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The family moved in 1891 to Jacksonville, Florida. 1911 Randolph was hoping to become an actor, to Harlem, New York City.
Randolph's parents were against his desire to be an actor. While he attended the City College of New York, he joined politics and economics. At City College, he met his future wife, Lucille Green know. Green was a teacher who had given up their profession after the death of her first husband, to open a profitable beauty salon. After her marriage to Randolph she often lost customers due to his political activities.
At City College Randolph also met Chandler Owen, a student of sociology and political science at Columbia University. Together they founded in 1917 the radical Harlem magazine The Messenger.
Services
1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This was the first serious attempt to create a union for employees of the Pullman Company, one of the major employers of African Americans. After years of bitter struggle, the Pullman Company finally began in 1935 to negotiate with the Brotherhood, and in 1937 a treaty was concluded. The Brotherhood was a member of the American Federation of Labor.
Randolph became one of the most well-known spokesman for civil rights of African Americans. In 1941, he slapped together with Bayard Rustin, and AJ Muste before a march on Washington to end discrimination in the armed forces. After long negotiations, the march was canceled when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Act. Some activists felt betrayed because Roosevelt's announcement was referring only to the defense industry and not to the armed forces themselves.
In 1947, the Committee Against Jim Crow Randolph in Military Service, which was later renamed the League for Non- Violent Civil Disobedience. President Harry S. Truman raised the segregation in the armed forces through Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. Randolph supported, restrictions on immigration, and was also a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc.
Randolph helped Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. to organize the March on Washington for work and freedom on August 28, 1963.
Appreciation
- On September 14, 1964 Randolph received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- Randolph's fight for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters are presented in Robert Townsend film 10,000 Black Men Named George. ( All African-American workers of the Pullman Company were addressed as " George " after George Pullman. )