A. Philip Randolph: Relentless Advocate for Economic and Racial Justice

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https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/15-0


A. Philip Randalp, a pioneer of the civil rights movement who said, 'Freedom is never given... it is won." (Image: Wikipedia Commons)

April 15 is the 125th anniversary of the birth of A. Philip Randolph, a staunch trade unionist, civil rights activist, and advocate for federal action to ensure every American receives equal protection under the Constitution. His 90 years of life spanned tumultuous times for the nation and were filled with violent repression and astounding advances, but Randolph never stopped fighting for structural change. As many despair the past three years of gridlock in Washington, it may be useful to remember the broader arc of history that Randolph helped to bend toward justice.

Born in segregated Florida on April 15, 1889, Randolph moved to New York in 1911 to expand his own horizons and quickly became engulfed in the excitement of a growing labor movement. He urged other black migrants from the south to join unions, to build their skills, and to get educated. By 1917, working as an elevator operator and a waiter, he organized his peers in both industries to fight for better wages and working conditions. He founded a radical magazine, The Messenger, that opposed lynching, U.S. participation in WWI, and encouraged integration and black collective action. In 1919, he became president of a union of black shipyard and dockworkers in Virginia that was dissolved four years later under pressure from the American Federation of Labor, which at that time preached but often failed to practice racial equality.

Four years later, he was leading the fight for improved wages and working conditions among railroad workers organized in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. After the Civil War, railroads expanded rapidly and became the major means of long-haul transportation across the continent. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Chicago entrepreneur George Pullman launched a new luxury for travelers: the sleeping car. Pullman built fancy sleeper cars and hired thousands of African-American men to work as porters/valets attending to the needs of travelers, leasing the cars and porters together ‒ as a package ‒ to the owners of the nation’s railroads. These Pullman porters worked long hours for low pay. The typical porter worked about 400 hours a month, traveling 11,000 miles, and was paid only $810 a year in 1926 ( $10,000 in today’s dollars). Most relied on tips from customers. By custom, the porters were all called “George” (for George Pullman), a demeaning insult to their humanity.

During World War I (1914-1918), the federal government took over the railroads and encouraged workers to organize into unions. In 1919, the Order of Sleeping Car Conductors was formed to bargain for better wages for white conductors (who were “sober and industrious, and of sound mind and body”). But the black porters the conductors supervised were not allowed to join, so they started their own union in 1925 and spent years fighting for formal recognition.