1925 A. Philip Randolph Fights for Jobs and Freedom

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. led the Civil Rights March on Washington D.C. and gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. There was another speech on that day, in front of the same memorial, that should be remembered as well as Dr. King’s historic speech. This speech came from A. Phillip Randolph, a great African-American labor organizer for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union.
  
“Let the nation know the meaning of our numbers. We are not a pressure group. We are not an organization. We are not a mob. We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution that is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights, for our white allies know that they are not free while we are not.”

~A. Phillip Randolph, 1963, Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

Phillip Randolph was born in 1889, in Crescent City, Florida and raised in Jacksonville before moving to New York City to attend college in 1911.  During this time, segregation, discrimination and prejudice allowed for African-Americans to only find work in selected areas. One of these areas was in the railroad industry. The Pullman Company employed twelve thousand black employees, but their practices were oftentimes discriminatory, paternalistic and unfair. Workers complained about $60 dollar a month wages, twenty-four hour work stretches and racial discrimination. 

In 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was formed in New York City and A. Phillip Randolph was its chief organizer. Their demands were a 240 hour work month and $150 a month pay as well as respect and dignity at the workplace. The Brotherhood eventually gained their demands, but only after the Pullman Company threatened to fire anyone who had threatened a strike and the Brotherhood lost most of its members. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Strike marks the first time in American History that a union of black men was victorious over a white employer.

A. Phillip Randolph is a hero of the American Civil Rights and Labor Movements. He was a man who demanded respect for African-Americans during the Civil Rights movement, and for all working people throughout his career as a Labor organizer. Randolph demand freedom and human rights for all oppressed people, making him one of the most effective Civil Rights and Labor activists that the world will ever see.