May 31, 2023 • 41 mins
A. Philip Randolph was a key figure in the history of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. But that was just one effort in a lifetime of activism for racial equality.
Research:
- "A. Philip Randolph." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 1998. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631005446/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=a02165a4. Accessed 10 May 2023.
- AFL-CIO. “A. Philip Randolph.” https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/asa-philip-randolph
- American Experience. “A. Philip Randolph.” From Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-philip-randolph/
- American Friends Service Committee. “Honoring A. Philip Randolph, a leader in the March on Washington.” 9/3/2020. https://afsc.org/news/honoring-philip-randolph-leader-march-washington
- Bishop, M. (2017, June 11). Lucille Campbell Green Randolph (1883-1963). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/randolph-lucille-campbell-green-1883-1963/
- Bracey, John H. Jr. and “August Meier. “Allies or Adversaries?: The NAACP, A. Philip Randolph and the 1941 March on Washington.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly , Spring 1991, Vol. 75, No. 1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40582270
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "A. Philip Randolph". Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 May. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/A-Philip-Randolph. Accessed 12 May 2023.
- Bynum, Cornelius. “A Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights.” University of Illinois Press. 2010.
- Green, James R. “A. Philip Randolph and Boston's African-American Railroad Worker.” Trotter Review. Vol. 6, Issue 2. 9/21/1992. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review
- Hill, Norman. "A. Philip Randolph. (Labor)." Social Policy, vol. 32, no. 4, summer 2002, pp. 9+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A90747203/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=f45caf0e. Accessed 10 May 2023.
- Marable, Manning. “A. Philip Randolph and the Foundations of Black American Socialism.” From Workers' Struggles, Past and Present, edited by James Green. Temple University Press.
- Prescod, Paul. “You Should Know More About A. Philip Randolph, One of America’s Greatest Socialists.” Jacobin. 5/23/2020. https://jacobin.com/2020/05/a-philip-randolph-socialist-civil-rights-march-bscp
- "Randolph, A. Philip." Development of the Industrial U.S. Reference Library, edited by Sonia G. Benson, et al., vol. 2: Biographies, UXL, 2006, pp. 182-192. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3442000053/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=643ce2c8. Accessed 10 May 2023.
- Randolph, A. Philip, "Letter from A. Philip Randolph, International President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City," 5 June 1941. Courtesy of National Archives. https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/protest-america/letter-philip-randolph-to
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Back in twenty fourteen, we did an episode on the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and one of the key
figures in the history of that union was a Philip Randolph.
He has been on my to do list for his
own episode ever since then. So I went on vacation
not long ago, and I took a train out of
Back Bay Station in Boston, and there in the Back
(00:38):
Bay Amtrak waiting area is a bronze statue of a
Philip Randolph that I did not know was there. I'd
gone through Back Bay before, but not in the Amtrak area.
There's also an exhibit over there called Knights of the
Rail that's full of information and quotes from oral history
interviews that were conducted with retired railroad workers over a
(00:59):
period years, mostly in the mid late nineteen eighties. So,
standing there waiting for my train, I was like, well,
guess I know what I'm doing when I get back.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I love it when that happens. Travel is inspiring. It
is a Philip Randolph was born Asa Philip Randolph on
April fifteenth, eighteen eighty nine, in Crescent City, Florida, that's
just south of Jacksonville, and the family moved to Jacksonville
when he was still a toddler. His parents were Elizabeth
Robinson and James William Randolph, and his older brother, also
(01:30):
named James, had been born in eighteen eighty seven. The
elder James Randolph, was a minister in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, and he also worked a number of other jobs,
including running a tailoring shop out of the family home,
one in which he also cleaned, pressed, and died clothing.
Elizabeth was a skilled seamstress and she also ran the
(01:51):
shop when her husband had to be away from home.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Jacksonville was home to a thriving black neighborhood, including a
number of other black owned businesses, and there were also
some black people in respected positions within the greater city,
including a judge. But when Asa was still very young,
white authorities in Jacksonville started making the city more and
more racially segregated. In eighteen ninety six, the Supreme Court
(02:15):
issued its decision and Plusy versus Ferguson that racial segregation
was legal under the US Constitution. ASA's parents were really
furious as segregation became more and more codified and the
Supreme Court decision was announced, and Asa and his brother
consequently weren't allowed to write on segregated street cars or
(02:36):
to use the segregated reading room at the library. Was
sort of their way of refusing to participate in this system.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
This response to segregation in Jacksonville was just a tiny
piece of how the family approached things like race and racism.
Elizabeth and James raised their sons to be avid readers,
proud of who they were, and politically aware. As a family,
they regularly read the work of people like Booker T.
Washington and web Do Boys and then discussed it together.
(03:05):
One work that really influenced Aso when he was still
very young was WEBD. Boyce's The Souls of Black Folk,
a collection of essays published in nineteen oh three that
discussed race, racism, racial progress, and obstacles that stood in
the way of that progress. The family also studied and
talked about the events of the day and people and
events from history, especially as they related to concepts like
(03:28):
race and class. This was deeply interconnected with James's work
in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the church's outlook
on things like race consciousness, liberation, and activism.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
In that earlier episode we did on the Brotherhood of
Sleeping car Porters, which we also just ran as a
Saturday Classic, we described A. Philip Randolph as an atheist,
and a number of historians and commentators do describe him
that way, but there's also some nuance to that. In
his adult life, a Philip Randolph wasn't a member of
(04:00):
any church. He generally lived a secular life, and sometimes
he was critical of organized religion. In nineteen seventy three,
he signed the Humanist Manifesto two, which described Theism as
quote an unproved and outmoded faith. But at the same time,
ASA's father was a devout minister, and Asa was raised
(04:21):
in a religious tradition that had from its very founding
actively resisted racism and discrimination. His outlook, approach, and manner
of speaking were all deeply informed by this upbringing. He
also absolutely recognized that for a lot of people their
church was not just their spiritual home, it was the
center of their social and political life, and he understood
(04:43):
how critically important churches were to the work that he
went on to do as an activist and an organizer.
That work was of course still to come at this
part of a Philip Randolph's story, but he was standing
up for himself and for other people from a young age.
As one example, he and his brother James were both
paper boys, and when they went to pick up their
(05:04):
papers to sell in the morning, they and the other
black paper boys had to wait until last. So no
matter how early they got there to get their papers,
they made their way out to the street corners to
sell them after the best spots had already been taken.
James led Asa and the other black paper boys to
convince the distributor to hand out the papers on a
(05:25):
first come, first served basis, rather than segregating the distribution
by race. At the same time, though the Randolph family
largely kept to themselves, keeping most of their political discussions
and activity going within their home and at church and
not out in the greater community of Jacksonville. This was
during a period that has come to be known as
(05:46):
the Natier of American race relations. The post Civil War
reconstruction had ended a lot of the progress that had
been made toward racial equality, had been reversed and segregation
and racist violence were both increasing. Raising his children with
a sense of racial pride and self determination, the elder
James Randolph also conducted himself so that he would be
(06:08):
seen as likable and respectable without drawing the attention of
the police or of white vigilantes. He wanted his children
to have a clear sense of their innate worth and
pride in their race, but of course he also wanted
to keep them safe. One notable exception, which was a
formative moment for the young Asa Randolph, happened after his
(06:29):
father heard that a gang of white men was planning
to lynch a black man who was being held at
the county jail. Ace's father armed himself with a pistol
and rallied other black men to do the same. They
all went to the jail to stand guard overnight. Ace's
mother put out all the lights in the house and
sat by the door with a rifle in her lap
(06:51):
until James came home the next morning. While Randolph would
go on to be a huge advocate for nonviolent direct
action and is often described as a pacifist, he also
did call for black people to be able to physically
protect themselves in their communities from violence. In nineteen oh seven,
Asa Randolph graduated from the Cookman Institute, which was the
(07:12):
first high school for black students in the state of Florida.
He was named valedictorian, and during high school he had
also played basketball, and he sang in the school choir.
He had particularly excelled at theater and at public speaking.
That family tradition of reading and talking about books and
essays had also involved his father training him to be
a really effective orator. For the rest of his life,
(07:35):
Randolph spoke very precisely with a distinctive, powerful baritone voice.
Although Randolph was an excellent student, the family couldn't afford
to send him to college. He spent a few years
working at various jobs around Jacksonville before moving to New
York City with a friend in nineteen eleven. They paid
their way to get there by working in the ship's galley.
(07:57):
Once in New York, he settled in Harlem, where he
can continued to work at a variety of jobs, including
being a dishwasher and an elevator operator. This was a
few years ahead of the creative and cultural flourishing that
would come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance or
the New Negro movement, and while that's usually described as
starting a little later in the nineteeneens, the seeds were
(08:19):
being sown when Randolph arrived in New York, and he
was part of it. We'll get to that after a
quick sponsor break. Sometime after moving to Harlem, Asa Randolph
started going by a Philip Randolph, and he started making
(08:41):
a name for himself as a soapbox orator. The corner
of one hundred and thirty fifth Street and Lenox Avenue
became known as the Speaker's Corner, and people would stand
on soapboxes and speak on political, social and economic issues.
He also started taking classes at City College of New York,
which at the time did not charged tuition.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Although he doesn't seem to have seriously considered trying to
earn a living as an actor, Randolph did really enjoy
the theater, especially Shakespeare, and he established a Shakespearean Society
in Harlem. He also became a regular guest at parties
hosted by Alilia Walker, daughter of Madame C. J. Walker,
along with writers, musicians, artists, and activists from in and
(09:22):
around Harlem. That's the second time she and her parties
have come up recently on the show. We could just
have an episode called Alia's Parties. It will list all
of the guests that come and how they connect to
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah. I haven't figured out whether there's enough information about
her for a full episode, but she intrigues me. In
November of nineteen fourteen, A Philip Randolph married Lucille Green,
who had her own connection to Madame C. J.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Walker.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Lucille had been born Lucille Campbell on April fifteenth, eighteen
eighty three, and she had graduated from the Teachers College
at Howard University. Her first husband was Joseph Green, and
he had studied law at Howard, but he died not
long after they got married. After his death, Lucille went
to Madame C. J. Walker's Lellia Beauty College, and she
(10:11):
used that education to start her own very successful salon
in Harlem. Lucille and A. Phillip were both fans of
the theater and Shakespeare. They were both like minded in
terms of political and social issues. This included a shared
interest in socialism, and they both joined the Socialist Party.
Another socialist that Randolph meant in Harlem was Chandler Owen.
(10:34):
They started their own political action group, the Independent Political Council,
and became known as quote the most notorious street corner
radicals in Harlem. Owen and Randolph were nicknamed Lenin and
Trotsky for their radical and revolutionary political writing. I should
note that neither of them was communist. Like those may
be names that may resonate with communism for people. Owen
(10:56):
and Randolph themselves, though, were not communists. But nineteen seventeen,
Owen and Randolph took a job with a union called
the Headwaiters and Sidewaiter Society of Greater New York. The
job was editing its publication, The Hotel Messenger. They took
this job in exchange for free office space for their
Independent Political Council. The union president, William White, expected them
(11:20):
to report on the union's activities and relevant news, and
they did technically, but the activities they focused on involved
corruption among the union members. In particular, some of the
head waiters were taking advantage of the sidewaiters and profiting
from it. Owen and Randolph were fired, and a few
(11:41):
months later they started their own publication, The Messenger, a
radical socialist newspaper for black readers that ran from late
nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty eight. It was billed as
quote the only radical Negro magazine in America, and they
printed it at Lucille Randolph's salon. Especially during these years,
randolph UF's work as an activist was only possible with
(12:02):
Lucille's continual support, both her encouragement of his activities and
her financial contributions. She was their primary breadwinner well into
the nineteen thirties and also funded a lot of his
work for years. Yeah, we're not going to talk about
her much in this episode, but he would not have
had the career and advocacy that he did without her.
(12:24):
When the US became involved in World War One, Randolph
added anti war advocacy to his work.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
In addition to.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Opposing the war, he argued that black men should not
fight on behalf of a government that was not treating
them as equal citizens at home. In nineteen eighteen, he
and Owen were both arrested at an anti war rally
in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were charged under the Espionage Act,
but a judge dropped those charges, saying that he did
(12:52):
not believe the two men were old enough or smart
enough to have written the material that they were distributing.
Apart from this probably having racist roots in terms of
his belief of their intelligence, they were about twenty nine.
After World War One was over, Randolph ran for office
at a couple of points as part of the Socialist
(13:12):
Party ticket, but he was not elected, and he gradually
became less active in socialism and the Socialist Party. The
US Communist Party was established in nineteen nineteen in the
wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, and a number of socialists
joined it, and while Randolph generally supported the revolutionaries in Russia,
he thought communism was undemocratic. Around the same time, he
(13:36):
also started to increasingly disagree with activist Marcus Garvey. Randolph
and Garvey had met in nineteen sixteen, not long after
Garvey had emigrated to Harlem from Jamaica. While still in Jamaica,
Garvey had founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was
a fraternal, benevolent organization and also a major part of
(13:57):
the Back to Africa movement in the early twentieth century.
Randolph had introduced Garvey to the soapbox scene and at
first had really respected Garvey's ideas, calling him quote one
of the militant black fighters for social and racial justice,
but Randolph's opinion of Garvey started to shift after World
War One. Garvey was advocating for the establishment of an
(14:20):
independent black nation in Africa and for black Americans to
move there, but Randolph argued that black people had the
right to be in the US and should have equal
civil and economic rights where they were without having to
move to another country. In addition to their growing ideological differences,
Garvey's actions became increasingly controversial. He admitted to holding a
(14:42):
secret meeting with the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
and he was also convicted of mail fraud. Randolph started
a Garvy Must Go campaign calling for Garvey to be deported,
and some of Randolph's rhetoric on this went beyond just
criticizing Garvey. He criticized immigrants from the West Indies a
(15:02):
lot more broadly.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
This was also.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Connected to his criticisms of communist as some of the
most prominent black members of the US Communist Party were
West Indian immigrants. During all of this, in September of
nineteen twenty two, Randolph received a box containing a severed
human hand at the Messenger office that contained a note
(15:25):
signed by the ku Klux Klan, but he thought it
had really come from Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey
was deported from the US in nineteen twenty seven after
spending about three years in prison for that mail fraud conviction.
Marcus Garvey was not the only person Randolph had changed
his mind about. He frequently revised his thoughts or his
(15:47):
outlook based on changing circumstances. As an example, we mentioned.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Earlier that Wed d Voyz's The Souls of Black Sulk
had helped set Randolph on a path of lifelong activism
for social ecttion economic justice. He had seen himself in
Dubois's description of the Talented tenth, the exceptional men who
would save the race, but Randolph later became deeply critical
of du Bois's support of the US involvement in World
(16:14):
War One and described Dubois as a quote parlor socialist
whom no one in the streets could recognize as a radical.
Randolph also came to view many of the people who
might be described as the Talented tenth as focused mostly
on their own self interests, aligning themselves with white capitalism,
rather than focusing on liberation for everyone. In nineteen twenty five,
(16:37):
Randolph was approached by railroad porters who worked for the
Pullman Company, who wanted his help informing a union. He
had been advocating for organized labor for years, including working
with elevator operators and dock workers who wanted to unionize.
He had built a really strong reputation as an organizer
and an activist, and the Pullman workers wanted somebody who
(16:59):
didn't work for them employer, so somebody who couldn't be
fired or bullied on the job for their activism. So
we won't walk through this whole union campaign because we
have covered it in an earlier episode that we just
ran as a Saturday Classic. But it went on for
more than a decade. Randolph and the Pullman porters really
struggled during the Great Depression, but then in nineteen thirty three,
(17:22):
a piece of new deal legislation called the National Industrial
Recovery Act protected employees' right to collective bargaining. The National
Labor Relations Act followed in nineteen thirty five. The Pullman
Company finally recognized the union in nineteen thirty seven, and
the union signed its first contract with the company later
that year. Up until this point, Randolph had seen unions
(17:46):
as a way for black workers to fight for economic equality.
He had always focused on liberation and equal rights for
Black Americans, but he also had thought that fighting for
economic equality was a way to achieve that. But his
experiences during the Pullman Porter's Union campaign made it obvious
that racial and economic equality were inextricably linked. One of
(18:09):
them would not simply follow from the other. He started
really pushing for racial equality and an end to discrimination
within organized labor. This included fighting against the establishment of
segregated local unions and fighting racial discrimination within integrated unions.
He also fought for unions of black workers like the
(18:32):
Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, which was an all black
labor force, because that was who Pullman hired to do
that job. He fought for them to be full and
equal members of federations like the American Federation of Labor.
As Randolph was fighting for equality for black workers in
organized labor, he also worked to integrate and end racial
discrimination in the federal government, the defense industry, and the
(18:56):
armed forces. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
World War two was just beginning as the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters was signing its first contract with the
Pullman Company. Japan invaded Manchuria in nineteen thirty seven, and
Germany started annexing territory in nineteen thirty eight, before invading
Poland on September one, nineteen thirty nine. Although the United
States did not formally enter the war until after Japan
(19:32):
bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December
of nineteen forty one, the US started offering significant aid
to the Allies. Before that point.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That meant that the US government factories that were producing
war material and other employers all needed workers, but black
people were often excluded from civil defense training programs and
from wartime jobs, or faced on the job discrimination if
they were hired. Under the Selective Training and Service Act
of nineteen forty, men between the ages of twenty one
(20:05):
and thirty five, regardless of their race, were also required
to register for the draft, but the military they were
being drafted into was racially segregated. Often all black military
units were assigned to the tasks that were necessary, but
were also considered the most menial and degrading. So A.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Philip Randolph started trying to push the government to end
this kind of racial discrimination. On September twenty seventh, nineteen forty, he,
Wilster White of the NAACP, and t Arnold Hill of
the Urban League all met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and other government officials. This meeting didn't lead to any
kind of meaningful change, so the following January Randolph watched
(20:47):
the March on Washington movement.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
This movement was focused on direct action, specifically getting thousands
of black people to march on Washington on July first
of that year to demand equality in the government, wartime industries,
and the military. Randolph was inspired by earlier marches that
had taken place in the US and elsewhere, including a
march on DC planned by Jacob Coxey in eighteen ninety four,
(21:13):
which we covered on the show in twenty twenty, and
the campaigns of civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi in India.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
The Pullman Porters were a major part of the March
on Washington movement. As we talked about in that earlier
episode on them, the porters became a critical source of information, support,
and organizing for civil rights. Their unionizing effort had given
them experience and advocacy in organizing, and their jobs took
them to cities all around the United States. Randolph described
(21:44):
the March on Washington movement as something that could not
have happened without them. The porters spread the word about
plans for the march, including organizing in their union halls
and through social and political organizations that they were also
members of of. Other political and civil rights organizations also
played a big part in this effort, including the NAACP
(22:07):
and its president Walter White.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Randolph got some criticism for a key part of this
which was that he wanted to exclude white people from
participating in the march. This seemed to contradict his ongoing
criticisms of separatism and black nationalism, including a lot of
his criticisms of Marcus Garvey. White people were also an
active part of the civil rights movement, and some organizations,
(22:32):
including the NAACP, had been intentionally founded as multiracial organizations.
People questioned whether allowing only black participants in the march
was the same thing as establishing white's only businesses and
social clubs. Randolph argued that no, it was not. The
planned March on Washington was about black people fighting for
(22:54):
rights they did not already have access to, but any
white marcher who might join them already had those rights.
He also argued that white people weren't losing anything by
being excluded from the march. Additionally, he really didn't want
this march to be overwhelmed by white activists, especially since
some of the white people who were most likely to
(23:16):
participate were communists, and Randolph was still deeply against communism
and wanted to distance the march from it as much
as possible. Lastly, he really thought this was an opportunity
for black people to show the whole country, regardless of race,
that they were capable of coming together for this kind
of action on their own. Randolph and the rest of
(23:38):
the organizers faced a lot of pressure from the federal
government and other officials to cancel this march. The idea
of bringing thousands of black demonstrators to the nation's capital,
which was full of racially segregated restaurants, hotels, and other
facilities as a war was looming, was seen as just
inherently threatening. This was especially true as word of the
(23:59):
march spread and Randolph's projection of how many people would
be there kept growing. By the spring of nineteen forty one,
He said to expect one hundred thousand black marchers on
Washington on July first.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
As the march date was approaching, Randolph met with First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and New York City Mayor Firella LaGuardia.
They told him the President was working on the issue
that he should call off the march. Basically, they advised
him to be patient and wait for the president's response.
Randolph pointed out that black Americans had been patient for
(24:34):
centuries and had served with valor going back to the
American Revolution, and were still not being treated as equal
members of society or equal parts of the military. Some
back and forth followed, with the President offering to instruct
the people who were in charge of factories involved in
defense projects to give equal employment opportunity to black workers.
(24:55):
But Randolph insisted this was not enough, that the only
thing that would be suff misition was an executive order
banning discrimination by the US government and by government contractors. Finally,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order eighty eight oh two on
June twenty fifth, nineteen forty one, just days before the
march was scheduled to take place. It read in part
(25:18):
quote there shall be no discrimination in the employment of
workers in defense industries and in government because of race, creed, color,
or national origin. The order also established the Committee on
Fair Employment Practice to investigate any violations.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
In response, Randolph postponed the march, but this effectively meant
that it was canceled, and he got some criticism for
this as well, including from youth organizer by Ard Rustin,
who we covered in a two part episode in June
of twenty sixteen. In general, the march's youth organizers did
not agree with canceling the march, and they also hadn't
(25:56):
been included in the decision to do so. Even so,
the president had issued an executive order. That executive order
didn't meet all of the march's demands, especially the demand
to integrate the military. People also just felt like this
was a lost opportunity.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Walter White of the NAACP supported the decision to cancel
the march because he had Randolph both believed that the
government was not going to budge on integrating the army
at that point, but something that he said during the
planning process kind of encapsulates some of why people were upset.
He said, quote, we must under no circumstances allow the
(26:35):
July first demonstration to be anything but an overwhelming success.
If we demonstrate to the United States Government and the
people of America that we mean business, it will help
forward attainment of racial democracy in the United States while
we are fighting for it abroad. It is time we
Negroes stop talking at the big gate and got down
(26:55):
to business to demonstrate that we are not going to
be satisfied with anything less than unqualified democracy for ourselves.
After this campaign, the NAACP awarded a Philip Randolph its
Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement. And even though the planned
July first March on Washington did not take place, the
(27:15):
March on Washington movement continued until nineteen forty six, coordinating
direct action campaigns in other cities around the United States.
Even though Randolph thought it best to cancel that nineteen
forty one march, he did not stop his calls for
the US to desegregate its military. He established the League
for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation. He served as
(27:40):
chair and Buyered Rusten was executive secretary. Randolph also co
chaired the Committee against Jim Crow in Military Service and training.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
In nineteen forty eight, Randolph testified before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on the subject of desegregating the military, and
that same year he and other black leaders met with
President Harry Truman on the issue. The Cold War was
developing between the US and Russia, and Randolph argued that
if the US did go to war again, black people
(28:09):
would no longer be willing to serve in a segregated military.
This was also a presidential election year, and civil rights
had become a major campaign issue. Truman thought he would
need the support of black voters in order to win reelection.
On July twenty sixth, nineteen forty eight, Truman signed Executive
Order ninety nine eighty one, which said, in part quote,
(28:31):
there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all
persons in the Armed Forces, without regard to race, color, religion,
or national origin.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Few years later, in nineteen fifty five, the American Federation
of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations or the
AFL and the CIO merged into one organization, and Randolph
was elected its vice president. In that role, he continued
pushing for desegregation and equal rights within the labor movement.
(29:02):
In nineteen fifty seven, he organized the prayer pilgrimage to Washington,
in which about twenty five thousand demonstrators gathered at the
Lincoln Memorial and Martin Luther King Junior gave the last
speech of the day that was his give Us the
Ballots speech. Soon after, Randolph also organized a youth march
for school desegregation. In nineteen sixty, continuing his fight against
(29:25):
racial discrimination and organized labor, Randolph helped found the Negro
American Labor Council, and he served as its president for
the next six years.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
On April twelfth, nineteen sixty three, Randolph's wife, Lucille died.
They had been married for forty eight years. When Lucille died,
Randolph was working with Bayard Rustin to plan the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place on
August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three. We talk more about
this march, at which Martin Luther King Junior gave his
I have a Dream speech in our two parter on
(29:57):
Bayard Rustin.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
As we talked about in that two parter, not long
before the March on Washington was to take place, South
Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond read from Rustin's FBI file on
the Senate floor. Rustin was gay, which wasn't a secret
among those who knew him, but same sex relationships were
widely illegal and heavily stigmatized. Thurmand called Rustin a sexual
(30:23):
deviant and turned his sexual orientation into national news. Acela
Randolph held a press conference on this, saying, in part quote,
I am sure I speak for the combined Negro leadership
in voicing my complete confidence in Bayard Rustin's character. That
mister Rustin was on one occasion arrested in another connection
(30:43):
has long been a matter of public record. I am
dismayed that there are in this country men who, wrapping
themselves in the mantle of Christian morality, would mutilate the
most elementary conceptions of human decency, privacy, and humility in
order to attack other men. A few years later, at
a birthday celebration for Randolph, Rustin said that other than
(31:04):
his grandparents, quote, no one has stood beside me in
times of trial the way mister Randolph has. At the
same time, by this point, Randolph was in his seventies
and people were starting to see him as part of
the old Guard in the movement more moderate or even conservative,
rather than as the radical that he had been in
his youth. For example, during the nineteen sixty three March
(31:28):
on Washington, A Philip Randolph was one of the people
who convinced John Lewis, who at the time was the
chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to tone down
some of his rhetoric. Randolph also helped Louis rewrite his
speech to be more moderate before it was delivered.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
At the march. This gives me a giggle, Yeah, yeah,
just because you know, having John Lewis be so much
a part of Atlanta and we know him, and like
the idea of someone being like no no les plus
of that. Yeah, well, and it's very fascinating to think of. Yeah,
(32:06):
we talked about in that in the episodes about Buyer Dress,
and we talked about how like as the plans for
the March on Washington got bigger and bigger, they also
became a like less radical would probably be the best
way to put it. And like a Philip Randolph was
afraid that if if John Lewis had said everything that
he needed to say about his opinions on like JFK,
(32:30):
then that could wind up like coming back on them
rather than getting them the goals that they wanted. They
would lose some potential allies. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. And then like after John Lewis died, one of
the things that was like kind of came around again
in new circles was like the two versions of that
speech and comparing them and like how his language had changed.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
In nineteen sixty four, President Lyndon Baines Johnson awarded A
Philip Randolph the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Two years later, Randolph, Rustin,
and King developed a ten year anti poverty program called
the Freedom Budget for All Americans, which was presented at
a conference at the White House. This plan contained proposals
for full employment, living wages, affordable medical and dental care,
(33:17):
clean air and water, and sustained economic growth for the nation,
all of it without a cost to taxpayers. Although the
three of them promoted these ideas extensively, and Rustin in
particular was a strident advocate, most of what they proposed
was not put into action. In nineteen sixty five, Randolph
and Rustin also established the A Philip Randolph Institute to
(33:40):
build alliances between the civil rights movement and the labor
movement and to advocate for political and economic justice. In
the last years of his life, A. Philip Randolph developed
a heart condition, and he mostly retired from public life
in nineteen sixty eight. He died on May sixteenth, nineteen
seventy nine, at the age of ninety. John Lewis later
(34:01):
said of him, quote, if he had been born in
another period, maybe of another color, he probably would have
been president. In another land, he probably would have been
maybe prime minister. But in a real sense he was
head of the building of a new nation, of a
better America. That statue at the Amtrak station that Tracy
mentioned earlier was made by sculptor Tina Allen. This was
(34:24):
her first major commission, and she went on to sculpt
other black historical figures, including Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver,
and Frederick Douglass. The A. Philip Randolph statue was unveiled
on October eighth, nineteen eighty eight, with retired members of
the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters in attendance. According to
news coverage from the time, Back Bay was chosen for
(34:45):
the statue because of its popularity as a railroad station
and because many of Boston's black reel workers had lived
in the surrounding neighborhoods. The oral history exhibit was unveiled
in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I wasn't able to confirm, but one of the sources
that I read said that this was the first statue
of like a black figure from the civil rights movement
in the city of Boston, but again was not able
to track down whether that's accurate or not. There is, however,
kind of an irony to the statue of Randolph being
in the Amtrak waiting area at Back Bay. Over the
(35:21):
nineteen fifties and sixties, train travel dropped really precipitously in
the US due to a number of different factors, including
the rise of commercial air travel and the building of
a more expansive and connected interstate highway system. There were
fewer and fewer porters working on the railroads, which meant
that membership in their union plummeted, and that left it
(35:43):
without a lot of bargaining power. Amtrak, or the National
Railroad Passenger Corporation, started operating in nineteen seventy one. It
was founded as part of a federal effort to keep
passenger rail service going in the wake of all this
Amtrak absorbed nearly the entire interstate passenger rail industry in
the US, with the exception of some regional commuter rail lines.
(36:06):
Amtrak handles nearly all interstate rail travel in the US today.
In nineteen seventy four, Amtrak signed an agreement with a
different union for workers who did the kind of jobs
that the porters had been doing. That was the Hotel
Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. There really wasn't a way
for the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters to recover from this,
(36:28):
and it merged with the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks in
nineteen seventy eight. So if you want to have a
statue of a Philip Randolph in a train station offering
interstate passenger service in the United States, it's probably going
to be an Amtrak station. Amtrak was also a big
part of the eventual end of the union that he
was so instrumental in founding.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Do you have listener mail for that too?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I just I kept my listener mail on my screen
todance that are printing it out because it's very picture heavy,
and as we established, I have challenges with printing emails
that contain pictures.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
So this is from Mendy.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Mendy's email is titled Hickory Dickree doc Door, and Mendy wrote, Hi,
Holly and Tracy. I got so excited this afternoon listening
to today's episode on Mother Goose. I was in Berlin,
Germany in November, and a large part of my time
was just wandering around the city. One day, I was
wandering around and found this amazing door which I have
no idea what the door is too or why it
(37:33):
was this awesome, but it appeared to be a visual
representation of the Hickory Dickree doc poem. I first noticed
the cat gargoyle while about half a black way, then
as I got closer noticed the mouse door handle. The
more I looked at it, the more I loved it.
I've searched Google a few times to see if I
can find out more about this door, but haven't found
anything yet. It was nowhere near the most historical thing
(37:55):
I found wandering around Berlin, but it was one of
the most whimsical. I sure do love to just wander
around the city. So I am. I am in favor
of everything that has happened as email. So first I'm
going to describe what is in this picture. That is
the next thing in the email. There is a cat gargoyle.
I'm ninety nine to nine point nine percent sure it's
(38:16):
a cat because this is a very long cattail, but
from some angles it looks almost like a dog. It's
like very stern looking cat gargoyle kind of on the
stonework on the facade of this building. And then there
is a door that has like the door handle has
a little mouse on it as like part of what
the door handle is carved to resemble. There's a little
(38:40):
cat face looking out of a little window above the
door handle with the mouse on it. And then there's
like other mice in various posas like incorporated as part
of this like fairly ornate door considering what doors usually
look like today. This email goes on to say, here
my pet tax photos. My Cataches is a snuggle bug.
(39:01):
My dog Brandy loves everyone. Unfortunately, my cat Dina, who
I've sent you pictures of before, recently passed away from
kidney failure. She was my constant companion for thirteen years
and I miss her brady, sassyself every single day. Peaches
and her emotional support shoes. It's a very very very
fluffy cat, and having also had a fluffy cat who
(39:21):
loved to love on people's shoes.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I love this picture.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Brandy is a dog who is giving us all some
side eye, and then Dina is napping in the sun.
Is very cute. Thanks for all your hard work. I
definitely appreciate the podcast and the hours and hours I've
spent with the two of you over the years. Mendy,
Thank you so much, Mendy for sending this note and
these pictures of this amazing door. I also tried to
(39:48):
find some more information about this door. It is in Berlin.
It is no longer a functioning door. It is like
now just sort of part of the building facade, and
the building that it is on is the Microsoft office
in Berlin. But I have I've like, I could not
(40:09):
find any other information about like this door, who carved it,
why it looks this way.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
It's a very cool looking door.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Though if you google something like cat and mouse door Berlin, Germany,
you might.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Find some pictures of it.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
So thanks so much Bendy for this email and for
these pictures, the cat pictures and the door pictures. If
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast, We're at History podcast from iHeartRadio dot com.
We're all over social media and miss in history, so
we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinters, and Instagram and you
can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or
(40:44):
wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Back in twenty fourteen, we did an episode on the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and one of the key
figures in the history of that union was a Philip Randolph.
He has been on my to do list for his
own episode ever since then. So I went on vacation
not long ago, and I took a train out of
Back Bay Station in Boston, and there in the Back
(00:38):
Bay Amtrak waiting area is a bronze statue of a
Philip Randolph that I did not know was there. I'd
gone through Back Bay before, but not in the Amtrak area.
There's also an exhibit over there called Knights of the
Rail that's full of information and quotes from oral history
interviews that were conducted with retired railroad workers over a
(00:59):
period years, mostly in the mid late nineteen eighties. So,
standing there waiting for my train, I was like, well,
guess I know what I'm doing when I get back.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I love it when that happens. Travel is inspiring. It
is a Philip Randolph was born Asa Philip Randolph on
April fifteenth, eighteen eighty nine, in Crescent City, Florida, that's
just south of Jacksonville, and the family moved to Jacksonville
when he was still a toddler. His parents were Elizabeth
Robinson and James William Randolph, and his older brother, also
(01:30):
named James, had been born in eighteen eighty seven. The
elder James Randolph, was a minister in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, and he also worked a number of other jobs,
including running a tailoring shop out of the family home,
one in which he also cleaned, pressed, and died clothing.
Elizabeth was a skilled seamstress and she also ran the
(01:51):
shop when her husband had to be away from home.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Jacksonville was home to a thriving black neighborhood, including a
number of other black owned businesses, and there were also
some black people in respected positions within the greater city,
including a judge. But when Asa was still very young,
white authorities in Jacksonville started making the city more and
more racially segregated. In eighteen ninety six, the Supreme Court
(02:15):
issued its decision and Plusy versus Ferguson that racial segregation
was legal under the US Constitution. ASA's parents were really
furious as segregation became more and more codified and the
Supreme Court decision was announced, and Asa and his brother
consequently weren't allowed to write on segregated street cars or
(02:36):
to use the segregated reading room at the library. Was
sort of their way of refusing to participate in this system.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
This response to segregation in Jacksonville was just a tiny
piece of how the family approached things like race and racism.
Elizabeth and James raised their sons to be avid readers,
proud of who they were, and politically aware. As a family,
they regularly read the work of people like Booker T.
Washington and web Do Boys and then discussed it together.
(03:05):
One work that really influenced Aso when he was still
very young was WEBD. Boyce's The Souls of Black Folk,
a collection of essays published in nineteen oh three that
discussed race, racism, racial progress, and obstacles that stood in
the way of that progress. The family also studied and
talked about the events of the day and people and
events from history, especially as they related to concepts like
(03:28):
race and class. This was deeply interconnected with James's work
in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the church's outlook
on things like race consciousness, liberation, and activism.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
In that earlier episode we did on the Brotherhood of
Sleeping car Porters, which we also just ran as a
Saturday Classic, we described A. Philip Randolph as an atheist,
and a number of historians and commentators do describe him
that way, but there's also some nuance to that. In
his adult life, a Philip Randolph wasn't a member of
(04:00):
any church. He generally lived a secular life, and sometimes
he was critical of organized religion. In nineteen seventy three,
he signed the Humanist Manifesto two, which described Theism as
quote an unproved and outmoded faith. But at the same time,
ASA's father was a devout minister, and Asa was raised
(04:21):
in a religious tradition that had from its very founding
actively resisted racism and discrimination. His outlook, approach, and manner
of speaking were all deeply informed by this upbringing. He
also absolutely recognized that for a lot of people their
church was not just their spiritual home, it was the
center of their social and political life, and he understood
(04:43):
how critically important churches were to the work that he
went on to do as an activist and an organizer.
That work was of course still to come at this
part of a Philip Randolph's story, but he was standing
up for himself and for other people from a young age.
As one example, he and his brother James were both
paper boys, and when they went to pick up their
(05:04):
papers to sell in the morning, they and the other
black paper boys had to wait until last. So no
matter how early they got there to get their papers,
they made their way out to the street corners to
sell them after the best spots had already been taken.
James led Asa and the other black paper boys to
convince the distributor to hand out the papers on a
(05:25):
first come, first served basis, rather than segregating the distribution
by race. At the same time, though the Randolph family
largely kept to themselves, keeping most of their political discussions
and activity going within their home and at church and
not out in the greater community of Jacksonville. This was
during a period that has come to be known as
(05:46):
the Natier of American race relations. The post Civil War
reconstruction had ended a lot of the progress that had
been made toward racial equality, had been reversed and segregation
and racist violence were both increasing. Raising his children with
a sense of racial pride and self determination, the elder
James Randolph also conducted himself so that he would be
(06:08):
seen as likable and respectable without drawing the attention of
the police or of white vigilantes. He wanted his children
to have a clear sense of their innate worth and
pride in their race, but of course he also wanted
to keep them safe. One notable exception, which was a
formative moment for the young Asa Randolph, happened after his
(06:29):
father heard that a gang of white men was planning
to lynch a black man who was being held at
the county jail. Ace's father armed himself with a pistol
and rallied other black men to do the same. They
all went to the jail to stand guard overnight. Ace's
mother put out all the lights in the house and
sat by the door with a rifle in her lap
(06:51):
until James came home the next morning. While Randolph would
go on to be a huge advocate for nonviolent direct
action and is often described as a pacifist, he also
did call for black people to be able to physically
protect themselves in their communities from violence. In nineteen oh seven,
Asa Randolph graduated from the Cookman Institute, which was the
(07:12):
first high school for black students in the state of Florida.
He was named valedictorian, and during high school he had
also played basketball, and he sang in the school choir.
He had particularly excelled at theater and at public speaking.
That family tradition of reading and talking about books and
essays had also involved his father training him to be
a really effective orator. For the rest of his life,
(07:35):
Randolph spoke very precisely with a distinctive, powerful baritone voice.
Although Randolph was an excellent student, the family couldn't afford
to send him to college. He spent a few years
working at various jobs around Jacksonville before moving to New
York City with a friend in nineteen eleven. They paid
their way to get there by working in the ship's galley.
(07:57):
Once in New York, he settled in Harlem, where he
can continued to work at a variety of jobs, including
being a dishwasher and an elevator operator. This was a
few years ahead of the creative and cultural flourishing that
would come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance or
the New Negro movement, and while that's usually described as
starting a little later in the nineteeneens, the seeds were
(08:19):
being sown when Randolph arrived in New York, and he
was part of it. We'll get to that after a
quick sponsor break. Sometime after moving to Harlem, Asa Randolph
started going by a Philip Randolph, and he started making
(08:41):
a name for himself as a soapbox orator. The corner
of one hundred and thirty fifth Street and Lenox Avenue
became known as the Speaker's Corner, and people would stand
on soapboxes and speak on political, social and economic issues.
He also started taking classes at City College of New York,
which at the time did not charged tuition.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Although he doesn't seem to have seriously considered trying to
earn a living as an actor, Randolph did really enjoy
the theater, especially Shakespeare, and he established a Shakespearean Society
in Harlem. He also became a regular guest at parties
hosted by Alilia Walker, daughter of Madame C. J. Walker,
along with writers, musicians, artists, and activists from in and
(09:22):
around Harlem. That's the second time she and her parties
have come up recently on the show. We could just
have an episode called Alia's Parties. It will list all
of the guests that come and how they connect to
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah. I haven't figured out whether there's enough information about
her for a full episode, but she intrigues me. In
November of nineteen fourteen, A Philip Randolph married Lucille Green,
who had her own connection to Madame C. J.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Walker.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Lucille had been born Lucille Campbell on April fifteenth, eighteen
eighty three, and she had graduated from the Teachers College
at Howard University. Her first husband was Joseph Green, and
he had studied law at Howard, but he died not
long after they got married. After his death, Lucille went
to Madame C. J. Walker's Lellia Beauty College, and she
(10:11):
used that education to start her own very successful salon
in Harlem. Lucille and A. Phillip were both fans of
the theater and Shakespeare. They were both like minded in
terms of political and social issues. This included a shared
interest in socialism, and they both joined the Socialist Party.
Another socialist that Randolph meant in Harlem was Chandler Owen.
(10:34):
They started their own political action group, the Independent Political Council,
and became known as quote the most notorious street corner
radicals in Harlem. Owen and Randolph were nicknamed Lenin and
Trotsky for their radical and revolutionary political writing. I should
note that neither of them was communist. Like those may
be names that may resonate with communism for people. Owen
(10:56):
and Randolph themselves, though, were not communists. But nineteen seventeen,
Owen and Randolph took a job with a union called
the Headwaiters and Sidewaiter Society of Greater New York. The
job was editing its publication, The Hotel Messenger. They took
this job in exchange for free office space for their
Independent Political Council. The union president, William White, expected them
(11:20):
to report on the union's activities and relevant news, and
they did technically, but the activities they focused on involved
corruption among the union members. In particular, some of the
head waiters were taking advantage of the sidewaiters and profiting
from it. Owen and Randolph were fired, and a few
(11:41):
months later they started their own publication, The Messenger, a
radical socialist newspaper for black readers that ran from late
nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty eight. It was billed as
quote the only radical Negro magazine in America, and they
printed it at Lucille Randolph's salon. Especially during these years,
randolph UF's work as an activist was only possible with
(12:02):
Lucille's continual support, both her encouragement of his activities and
her financial contributions. She was their primary breadwinner well into
the nineteen thirties and also funded a lot of his
work for years. Yeah, we're not going to talk about
her much in this episode, but he would not have
had the career and advocacy that he did without her.
(12:24):
When the US became involved in World War One, Randolph
added anti war advocacy to his work.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
In addition to.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Opposing the war, he argued that black men should not
fight on behalf of a government that was not treating
them as equal citizens at home. In nineteen eighteen, he
and Owen were both arrested at an anti war rally
in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were charged under the Espionage Act,
but a judge dropped those charges, saying that he did
(12:52):
not believe the two men were old enough or smart
enough to have written the material that they were distributing.
Apart from this probably having racist roots in terms of
his belief of their intelligence, they were about twenty nine.
After World War One was over, Randolph ran for office
at a couple of points as part of the Socialist
(13:12):
Party ticket, but he was not elected, and he gradually
became less active in socialism and the Socialist Party. The
US Communist Party was established in nineteen nineteen in the
wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, and a number of socialists
joined it, and while Randolph generally supported the revolutionaries in Russia,
he thought communism was undemocratic. Around the same time, he
(13:36):
also started to increasingly disagree with activist Marcus Garvey. Randolph
and Garvey had met in nineteen sixteen, not long after
Garvey had emigrated to Harlem from Jamaica. While still in Jamaica,
Garvey had founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was
a fraternal, benevolent organization and also a major part of
(13:57):
the Back to Africa movement in the early twentieth century.
Randolph had introduced Garvey to the soapbox scene and at
first had really respected Garvey's ideas, calling him quote one
of the militant black fighters for social and racial justice,
but Randolph's opinion of Garvey started to shift after World
War One. Garvey was advocating for the establishment of an
(14:20):
independent black nation in Africa and for black Americans to
move there, but Randolph argued that black people had the
right to be in the US and should have equal
civil and economic rights where they were without having to
move to another country. In addition to their growing ideological differences,
Garvey's actions became increasingly controversial. He admitted to holding a
(14:42):
secret meeting with the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
and he was also convicted of mail fraud. Randolph started
a Garvy Must Go campaign calling for Garvey to be deported,
and some of Randolph's rhetoric on this went beyond just
criticizing Garvey. He criticized immigrants from the West Indies a
(15:02):
lot more broadly.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
This was also.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Connected to his criticisms of communist as some of the
most prominent black members of the US Communist Party were
West Indian immigrants. During all of this, in September of
nineteen twenty two, Randolph received a box containing a severed
human hand at the Messenger office that contained a note
(15:25):
signed by the ku Klux Klan, but he thought it
had really come from Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey
was deported from the US in nineteen twenty seven after
spending about three years in prison for that mail fraud conviction.
Marcus Garvey was not the only person Randolph had changed
his mind about. He frequently revised his thoughts or his
(15:47):
outlook based on changing circumstances. As an example, we mentioned.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Earlier that Wed d Voyz's The Souls of Black Sulk
had helped set Randolph on a path of lifelong activism
for social ecttion economic justice. He had seen himself in
Dubois's description of the Talented tenth, the exceptional men who
would save the race, but Randolph later became deeply critical
of du Bois's support of the US involvement in World
(16:14):
War One and described Dubois as a quote parlor socialist
whom no one in the streets could recognize as a radical.
Randolph also came to view many of the people who
might be described as the Talented tenth as focused mostly
on their own self interests, aligning themselves with white capitalism,
rather than focusing on liberation for everyone. In nineteen twenty five,
(16:37):
Randolph was approached by railroad porters who worked for the
Pullman Company, who wanted his help informing a union. He
had been advocating for organized labor for years, including working
with elevator operators and dock workers who wanted to unionize.
He had built a really strong reputation as an organizer
and an activist, and the Pullman workers wanted somebody who
(16:59):
didn't work for them employer, so somebody who couldn't be
fired or bullied on the job for their activism. So
we won't walk through this whole union campaign because we
have covered it in an earlier episode that we just
ran as a Saturday Classic. But it went on for
more than a decade. Randolph and the Pullman porters really
struggled during the Great Depression, but then in nineteen thirty three,
(17:22):
a piece of new deal legislation called the National Industrial
Recovery Act protected employees' right to collective bargaining. The National
Labor Relations Act followed in nineteen thirty five. The Pullman
Company finally recognized the union in nineteen thirty seven, and
the union signed its first contract with the company later
that year. Up until this point, Randolph had seen unions
(17:46):
as a way for black workers to fight for economic equality.
He had always focused on liberation and equal rights for
Black Americans, but he also had thought that fighting for
economic equality was a way to achieve that. But his
experiences during the Pullman Porter's Union campaign made it obvious
that racial and economic equality were inextricably linked. One of
(18:09):
them would not simply follow from the other. He started
really pushing for racial equality and an end to discrimination
within organized labor. This included fighting against the establishment of
segregated local unions and fighting racial discrimination within integrated unions.
He also fought for unions of black workers like the
(18:32):
Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, which was an all black
labor force, because that was who Pullman hired to do
that job. He fought for them to be full and
equal members of federations like the American Federation of Labor.
As Randolph was fighting for equality for black workers in
organized labor, he also worked to integrate and end racial
discrimination in the federal government, the defense industry, and the
(18:56):
armed forces. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
World War two was just beginning as the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters was signing its first contract with the
Pullman Company. Japan invaded Manchuria in nineteen thirty seven, and
Germany started annexing territory in nineteen thirty eight, before invading
Poland on September one, nineteen thirty nine. Although the United
States did not formally enter the war until after Japan
(19:32):
bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December
of nineteen forty one, the US started offering significant aid
to the Allies. Before that point.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That meant that the US government factories that were producing
war material and other employers all needed workers, but black
people were often excluded from civil defense training programs and
from wartime jobs, or faced on the job discrimination if
they were hired. Under the Selective Training and Service Act
of nineteen forty, men between the ages of twenty one
(20:05):
and thirty five, regardless of their race, were also required
to register for the draft, but the military they were
being drafted into was racially segregated. Often all black military
units were assigned to the tasks that were necessary, but
were also considered the most menial and degrading. So A.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Philip Randolph started trying to push the government to end
this kind of racial discrimination. On September twenty seventh, nineteen forty, he,
Wilster White of the NAACP, and t Arnold Hill of
the Urban League all met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and other government officials. This meeting didn't lead to any
kind of meaningful change, so the following January Randolph watched
(20:47):
the March on Washington movement.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
This movement was focused on direct action, specifically getting thousands
of black people to march on Washington on July first
of that year to demand equality in the government, wartime industries,
and the military. Randolph was inspired by earlier marches that
had taken place in the US and elsewhere, including a
march on DC planned by Jacob Coxey in eighteen ninety four,
(21:13):
which we covered on the show in twenty twenty, and
the campaigns of civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi in India.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
The Pullman Porters were a major part of the March
on Washington movement. As we talked about in that earlier
episode on them, the porters became a critical source of information, support,
and organizing for civil rights. Their unionizing effort had given
them experience and advocacy in organizing, and their jobs took
them to cities all around the United States. Randolph described
(21:44):
the March on Washington movement as something that could not
have happened without them. The porters spread the word about
plans for the march, including organizing in their union halls
and through social and political organizations that they were also
members of of. Other political and civil rights organizations also
played a big part in this effort, including the NAACP
(22:07):
and its president Walter White.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Randolph got some criticism for a key part of this
which was that he wanted to exclude white people from
participating in the march. This seemed to contradict his ongoing
criticisms of separatism and black nationalism, including a lot of
his criticisms of Marcus Garvey. White people were also an
active part of the civil rights movement, and some organizations,
(22:32):
including the NAACP, had been intentionally founded as multiracial organizations.
People questioned whether allowing only black participants in the march
was the same thing as establishing white's only businesses and
social clubs. Randolph argued that no, it was not. The
planned March on Washington was about black people fighting for
(22:54):
rights they did not already have access to, but any
white marcher who might join them already had those rights.
He also argued that white people weren't losing anything by
being excluded from the march. Additionally, he really didn't want
this march to be overwhelmed by white activists, especially since
some of the white people who were most likely to
(23:16):
participate were communists, and Randolph was still deeply against communism
and wanted to distance the march from it as much
as possible. Lastly, he really thought this was an opportunity
for black people to show the whole country, regardless of race,
that they were capable of coming together for this kind
of action on their own. Randolph and the rest of
(23:38):
the organizers faced a lot of pressure from the federal
government and other officials to cancel this march. The idea
of bringing thousands of black demonstrators to the nation's capital,
which was full of racially segregated restaurants, hotels, and other
facilities as a war was looming, was seen as just
inherently threatening. This was especially true as word of the
(23:59):
march spread and Randolph's projection of how many people would
be there kept growing. By the spring of nineteen forty one,
He said to expect one hundred thousand black marchers on
Washington on July first.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
As the march date was approaching, Randolph met with First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and New York City Mayor Firella LaGuardia.
They told him the President was working on the issue
that he should call off the march. Basically, they advised
him to be patient and wait for the president's response.
Randolph pointed out that black Americans had been patient for
(24:34):
centuries and had served with valor going back to the
American Revolution, and were still not being treated as equal
members of society or equal parts of the military. Some
back and forth followed, with the President offering to instruct
the people who were in charge of factories involved in
defense projects to give equal employment opportunity to black workers.
(24:55):
But Randolph insisted this was not enough, that the only
thing that would be suff misition was an executive order
banning discrimination by the US government and by government contractors. Finally,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order eighty eight oh two on
June twenty fifth, nineteen forty one, just days before the
march was scheduled to take place. It read in part
(25:18):
quote there shall be no discrimination in the employment of
workers in defense industries and in government because of race, creed, color,
or national origin. The order also established the Committee on
Fair Employment Practice to investigate any violations.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
In response, Randolph postponed the march, but this effectively meant
that it was canceled, and he got some criticism for
this as well, including from youth organizer by Ard Rustin,
who we covered in a two part episode in June
of twenty sixteen. In general, the march's youth organizers did
not agree with canceling the march, and they also hadn't
(25:56):
been included in the decision to do so. Even so,
the president had issued an executive order. That executive order
didn't meet all of the march's demands, especially the demand
to integrate the military. People also just felt like this
was a lost opportunity.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Walter White of the NAACP supported the decision to cancel
the march because he had Randolph both believed that the
government was not going to budge on integrating the army
at that point, but something that he said during the
planning process kind of encapsulates some of why people were upset.
He said, quote, we must under no circumstances allow the
(26:35):
July first demonstration to be anything but an overwhelming success.
If we demonstrate to the United States Government and the
people of America that we mean business, it will help
forward attainment of racial democracy in the United States while
we are fighting for it abroad. It is time we
Negroes stop talking at the big gate and got down
(26:55):
to business to demonstrate that we are not going to
be satisfied with anything less than unqualified democracy for ourselves.
After this campaign, the NAACP awarded a Philip Randolph its
Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement. And even though the planned
July first March on Washington did not take place, the
(27:15):
March on Washington movement continued until nineteen forty six, coordinating
direct action campaigns in other cities around the United States.
Even though Randolph thought it best to cancel that nineteen
forty one march, he did not stop his calls for
the US to desegregate its military. He established the League
for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation. He served as
(27:40):
chair and Buyered Rusten was executive secretary. Randolph also co
chaired the Committee against Jim Crow in Military Service and training.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
In nineteen forty eight, Randolph testified before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on the subject of desegregating the military, and
that same year he and other black leaders met with
President Harry Truman on the issue. The Cold War was
developing between the US and Russia, and Randolph argued that
if the US did go to war again, black people
(28:09):
would no longer be willing to serve in a segregated military.
This was also a presidential election year, and civil rights
had become a major campaign issue. Truman thought he would
need the support of black voters in order to win reelection.
On July twenty sixth, nineteen forty eight, Truman signed Executive
Order ninety nine eighty one, which said, in part quote,
(28:31):
there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all
persons in the Armed Forces, without regard to race, color, religion,
or national origin.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Few years later, in nineteen fifty five, the American Federation
of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations or the
AFL and the CIO merged into one organization, and Randolph
was elected its vice president. In that role, he continued
pushing for desegregation and equal rights within the labor movement.
(29:02):
In nineteen fifty seven, he organized the prayer pilgrimage to Washington,
in which about twenty five thousand demonstrators gathered at the
Lincoln Memorial and Martin Luther King Junior gave the last
speech of the day that was his give Us the
Ballots speech. Soon after, Randolph also organized a youth march
for school desegregation. In nineteen sixty, continuing his fight against
(29:25):
racial discrimination and organized labor, Randolph helped found the Negro
American Labor Council, and he served as its president for
the next six years.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
On April twelfth, nineteen sixty three, Randolph's wife, Lucille died.
They had been married for forty eight years. When Lucille died,
Randolph was working with Bayard Rustin to plan the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place on
August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three. We talk more about
this march, at which Martin Luther King Junior gave his
I have a Dream speech in our two parter on
(29:57):
Bayard Rustin.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
As we talked about in that two parter, not long
before the March on Washington was to take place, South
Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond read from Rustin's FBI file on
the Senate floor. Rustin was gay, which wasn't a secret
among those who knew him, but same sex relationships were
widely illegal and heavily stigmatized. Thurmand called Rustin a sexual
(30:23):
deviant and turned his sexual orientation into national news. Acela
Randolph held a press conference on this, saying, in part quote,
I am sure I speak for the combined Negro leadership
in voicing my complete confidence in Bayard Rustin's character. That
mister Rustin was on one occasion arrested in another connection
(30:43):
has long been a matter of public record. I am
dismayed that there are in this country men who, wrapping
themselves in the mantle of Christian morality, would mutilate the
most elementary conceptions of human decency, privacy, and humility in
order to attack other men. A few years later, at
a birthday celebration for Randolph, Rustin said that other than
(31:04):
his grandparents, quote, no one has stood beside me in
times of trial the way mister Randolph has. At the
same time, by this point, Randolph was in his seventies
and people were starting to see him as part of
the old Guard in the movement more moderate or even conservative,
rather than as the radical that he had been in
his youth. For example, during the nineteen sixty three March
(31:28):
on Washington, A Philip Randolph was one of the people
who convinced John Lewis, who at the time was the
chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to tone down
some of his rhetoric. Randolph also helped Louis rewrite his
speech to be more moderate before it was delivered.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
At the march. This gives me a giggle, Yeah, yeah,
just because you know, having John Lewis be so much
a part of Atlanta and we know him, and like
the idea of someone being like no no les plus
of that. Yeah, well, and it's very fascinating to think of. Yeah,
(32:06):
we talked about in that in the episodes about Buyer Dress,
and we talked about how like as the plans for
the March on Washington got bigger and bigger, they also
became a like less radical would probably be the best
way to put it. And like a Philip Randolph was
afraid that if if John Lewis had said everything that
he needed to say about his opinions on like JFK,
(32:30):
then that could wind up like coming back on them
rather than getting them the goals that they wanted. They
would lose some potential allies. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. And then like after John Lewis died, one of
the things that was like kind of came around again
in new circles was like the two versions of that
speech and comparing them and like how his language had changed.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
In nineteen sixty four, President Lyndon Baines Johnson awarded A
Philip Randolph the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Two years later, Randolph, Rustin,
and King developed a ten year anti poverty program called
the Freedom Budget for All Americans, which was presented at
a conference at the White House. This plan contained proposals
for full employment, living wages, affordable medical and dental care,
(33:17):
clean air and water, and sustained economic growth for the nation,
all of it without a cost to taxpayers. Although the
three of them promoted these ideas extensively, and Rustin in
particular was a strident advocate, most of what they proposed
was not put into action. In nineteen sixty five, Randolph
and Rustin also established the A Philip Randolph Institute to
(33:40):
build alliances between the civil rights movement and the labor
movement and to advocate for political and economic justice. In
the last years of his life, A. Philip Randolph developed
a heart condition, and he mostly retired from public life
in nineteen sixty eight. He died on May sixteenth, nineteen
seventy nine, at the age of ninety. John Lewis later
(34:01):
said of him, quote, if he had been born in
another period, maybe of another color, he probably would have
been president. In another land, he probably would have been
maybe prime minister. But in a real sense he was
head of the building of a new nation, of a
better America. That statue at the Amtrak station that Tracy
mentioned earlier was made by sculptor Tina Allen. This was
(34:24):
her first major commission, and she went on to sculpt
other black historical figures, including Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver,
and Frederick Douglass. The A. Philip Randolph statue was unveiled
on October eighth, nineteen eighty eight, with retired members of
the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters in attendance. According to
news coverage from the time, Back Bay was chosen for
(34:45):
the statue because of its popularity as a railroad station
and because many of Boston's black reel workers had lived
in the surrounding neighborhoods. The oral history exhibit was unveiled
in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I wasn't able to confirm, but one of the sources
that I read said that this was the first statue
of like a black figure from the civil rights movement
in the city of Boston, but again was not able
to track down whether that's accurate or not. There is, however,
kind of an irony to the statue of Randolph being
in the Amtrak waiting area at Back Bay. Over the
(35:21):
nineteen fifties and sixties, train travel dropped really precipitously in
the US due to a number of different factors, including
the rise of commercial air travel and the building of
a more expansive and connected interstate highway system. There were
fewer and fewer porters working on the railroads, which meant
that membership in their union plummeted, and that left it
(35:43):
without a lot of bargaining power. Amtrak, or the National
Railroad Passenger Corporation, started operating in nineteen seventy one. It
was founded as part of a federal effort to keep
passenger rail service going in the wake of all this
Amtrak absorbed nearly the entire interstate passenger rail industry in
the US, with the exception of some regional commuter rail lines.
(36:06):
Amtrak handles nearly all interstate rail travel in the US today.
In nineteen seventy four, Amtrak signed an agreement with a
different union for workers who did the kind of jobs
that the porters had been doing. That was the Hotel
Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. There really wasn't a way
for the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters to recover from this,
(36:28):
and it merged with the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks in
nineteen seventy eight. So if you want to have a
statue of a Philip Randolph in a train station offering
interstate passenger service in the United States, it's probably going
to be an Amtrak station. Amtrak was also a big
part of the eventual end of the union that he
was so instrumental in founding.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Do you have listener mail for that too?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I just I kept my listener mail on my screen
todance that are printing it out because it's very picture heavy,
and as we established, I have challenges with printing emails
that contain pictures.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
So this is from Mendy.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Mendy's email is titled Hickory Dickree doc Door, and Mendy wrote, Hi,
Holly and Tracy. I got so excited this afternoon listening
to today's episode on Mother Goose. I was in Berlin,
Germany in November, and a large part of my time
was just wandering around the city. One day, I was
wandering around and found this amazing door which I have
no idea what the door is too or why it
(37:33):
was this awesome, but it appeared to be a visual
representation of the Hickory Dickree doc poem. I first noticed
the cat gargoyle while about half a black way, then
as I got closer noticed the mouse door handle. The
more I looked at it, the more I loved it.
I've searched Google a few times to see if I
can find out more about this door, but haven't found
anything yet. It was nowhere near the most historical thing
(37:55):
I found wandering around Berlin, but it was one of
the most whimsical. I sure do love to just wander
around the city. So I am. I am in favor
of everything that has happened as email. So first I'm
going to describe what is in this picture. That is
the next thing in the email. There is a cat gargoyle.
I'm ninety nine to nine point nine percent sure it's
(38:16):
a cat because this is a very long cattail, but
from some angles it looks almost like a dog. It's
like very stern looking cat gargoyle kind of on the
stonework on the facade of this building. And then there
is a door that has like the door handle has
a little mouse on it as like part of what
the door handle is carved to resemble. There's a little
(38:40):
cat face looking out of a little window above the
door handle with the mouse on it. And then there's
like other mice in various posas like incorporated as part
of this like fairly ornate door considering what doors usually
look like today. This email goes on to say, here
my pet tax photos. My Cataches is a snuggle bug.
(39:01):
My dog Brandy loves everyone. Unfortunately, my cat Dina, who
I've sent you pictures of before, recently passed away from
kidney failure. She was my constant companion for thirteen years
and I miss her brady, sassyself every single day. Peaches
and her emotional support shoes. It's a very very very
fluffy cat, and having also had a fluffy cat who
(39:21):
loved to love on people's shoes.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I love this picture.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Brandy is a dog who is giving us all some
side eye, and then Dina is napping in the sun.
Is very cute. Thanks for all your hard work. I
definitely appreciate the podcast and the hours and hours I've
spent with the two of you over the years. Mendy,
Thank you so much, Mendy for sending this note and
these pictures of this amazing door. I also tried to
(39:48):
find some more information about this door. It is in Berlin.
It is no longer a functioning door. It is like
now just sort of part of the building facade, and
the building that it is on is the Microsoft office
in Berlin. But I have I've like, I could not
(40:09):
find any other information about like this door, who carved it,
why it looks this way.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
It's a very cool looking door.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Though if you google something like cat and mouse door Berlin, Germany,
you might.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Find some pictures of it.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
So thanks so much Bendy for this email and for
these pictures, the cat pictures and the door pictures. If
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast, We're at History podcast from iHeartRadio dot com.
We're all over social media and miss in history, so
we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinters, and Instagram and you
can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or
(40:44):
wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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