#a. philip randolph

[todaysdocument]

President Lyndon B. Johnson Awards the Medal of Freedom to A. Philip Randolph

Collection LBJ-WHPO: White House Photo Office CollectionSeries: Johnson White House Photographs

This color photograph shows President Lyndon Johnson standing behind a podium.  He is turned away from the podium and shaking hands with A. Philip Randolph, the prominent African American labor leader.  Nearby, General Chester Clifton is holding the medal.  Behind the men is a gold colored curtain and an American flag.

[ausetkmt]

“Freedom is never given; it is won.” —A. Philip Randolph, civil rights activist

[ifelllikeastar]

A. Philip Randolph was a labor leader and social activist. During World War I, Randolph tried to unionize African American shipyard workers and elevator operators, and co-launched a magazine designed to encourage demand for higher wages. He later founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which by 1937 would become the first official African American labor union.

In the 1940s, Randolph's abilities as an organizer had grown to such lengths that he became the driving force in ending racial discrimination in government defense factories and desegregating the armed forces, both done via presidential decree. Becoming involved in additional civil rights work, he was a principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

Born Asa Philip Randolph on April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida and died on May 16, 1979 in Manhattan, New York, New York at the age of 90.

[odinsblog]

Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of Federal aid to education, and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress.

—A. Philip Randolph, speaking at The March on Washington 60 years ago

[fdrlibrary]

Labor Day

During the war years, Eleanor Roosevelt developed a working relationship with labor leader and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979). In September 1940, she was instrumental in arranging an Oval Office meeting with FDR for Randolph and Walter White to discuss racial discrimination and segregation in America’s military and defense industries. The following year, she worked with Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Walter White, Pauli Murray, and others on efforts to commute the death sentence of Odell Waller, a Black sharecropper convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Virginia. After the war, Randolph and ER worked together on efforts to establish a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, foster other labor and civil rights causes, and support a new generation of leaders in the growing Civil Rights Movement.

Learn more about A. Philip Randolph in our current special exhibition BLACK AMERICANS, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND THE ROOSEVELTS: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/civil-rights-special-exhibit

📷: LOC Photo: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017840536/

#LaborDay

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Stephen Millies

The establishment wants the historic 1963 march to be seen as simply a feel-good moment. Only the soaring “I have a dream” portions of Dr. King’s great speech are usually quoted in the media.

Far less mentioned was King saying that “the whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” 

Capitalists didn’t want the March on Washington to take place. They feared those “whirlwinds of revolt” as hundreds of thousands of Black people and their allies were coming to Washington, D.C. 

[thoughtportal]

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

I keep a running list of ideas and observations that could be used for columns or essays, and this week, my original plan was to write about A. Philip Randolph, the labor leader and civil rights activist whose work in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s was crucial to the growth and success of the civil rights movement. He had a starring role at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which itself was the culmination of an effort Randolph had begun in 1941 with his fellow activist Bayard Rustin and other allies in the civil rights and labor movements.

I couldn’t make the column work — these things happen! — but I still want to share some of the material, both because it’s intrinsically interesting and because it illustrates a point I have made, and will continue to make, in my work for The Times.

To the extent that Randolph is still known to the public, it is as one of the more moderate leaders of the civil rights movement, a member of the old guard in contrast to younger leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Randolph was at one point a young man, and as a young man, he was a fierce and radical proponent of economic justice as the foundation for civil rights and democratic equality.

You can see much of this in Randolph’s writing for The Messenger, an independent magazine he co-founded in 1917 with assistance from the Socialist Party (and the help of his wife, Lucille Campbell Green), which was still a significant force in American politics at the time. For example, in a 1919 piece, “Lynching: Capitalism Its Cause; Socialism Its Cure,” Randolph condemns “the economic arrangement in the South” as the “fundamental cause of race prejudice, which is the fuse that causes the magazine of capitalism to explode into race conflicts.” He blasts “prejudice as the chief weapon in the South which enables the capitalists to exploit both races” and warns that in actuality “capitalism knows no color line” and that capitalists “will coin the blood, sweat and suffering of white women and white children or black women and black children into dollars and dividends.”

A. Philip Randolph, circa 1937.MPI/Getty Images

In one of Randolph’s more arresting formulations, found in a 1926 address, “The Negro Faces the Future,” delivered not long after he was elected president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, he connects the Black experience of slavery and discrimination to the entire class system: “From the beginning of the systematic trade in men up to the present moment, the Negro is the one outstanding unpaid worker in the modern world,” Randolph said.

“To the end of correcting this evil,” he continued, “the Negro’s next gift to America will be in economic democracy” and “demonstrating the virtue of the principle of collective bargaining.”

One of the points I’ve tried to make in my column and in this newsletter is that there are multiple and competing traditions of freedom in American society and that one of the most powerful is an egalitarian vision that makes economic security the foundation of democratic self-rule. A related point I hope to explore in detail this year is that by virtue of the largely shared experience of slavery and peonage, the African American political tradition is especially attuned to the vital importance of economic equality to building a truly democratic society.

Here, I’ll let Randolph have the final word: “The insistent cry for freedom on the part of the Negro has kept the American people face to face with the fact that a democracy has not fulfilled its highest mission so long as there are people in the country, black or white, who cannot participate in the affairs of government, industry or society generally as free, intelligent human beings.”

What I Wrote

Because Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I didn’t have a Tuesday column. But my Friday column was an argument for why President Biden should just say that the debt limit is unconstitutional and thus invalid.

Biden should make the case that the debt limit, because of the threat it poses to the validity of the nation’s debt, is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

By this reasoning, Congress has no right to prevent the White House from faithfully executing the law and borrowing money in accordance with its own instructions. If and when the Treasury exhausts its extraordinary measures, it should simply keep issuing debt, in order for the federal government to do what it is obligated to do under the Constitution.

And on the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we discussed the 1994 alien invasion thriller “Puppet Masters.”

[afrotumble]

MLK mentor- A Philip Randolph

[nudeartpluspoetry]

A. Philip Randolph helped organize the all-Black Brotherhood of Pullman Car Porters. He also helped organize the March on Washington at which MLK, Jr. spoke

On this day, 11 May 1894, the Pullman railroad strike began in Chicago following the firing of three workers the previous day, called by Eugene Debs’ American Railroad Union (ARU). A month after it began, 400 ARU delegates from around the country met, and in defiance of Debs abd their leadership agreed to boycott all Pullman railroad cars across the country in support of the workers in Chicago. The boycott began on June 26, when switchmen in Chicago refused to switch Pullman cars, and were fired. Their colleagues then walked out in their support. The strike then spread down various railroads until soon all 26 roads out of Chicago were stopped, as were all of the transcontinental lines which carried Pullman cars. At its peak it was the biggest strike in US history to date, involving over 250,000 rail workers across 27 states and territories. That said, the union weakened its base of support by refusing to admit Black members, which enabled employers to hire some Black workers as strikebreakers. Despite this, some Black workers helped strikers blockade train tracks around Chicago. Then the US government intervened, granting an injunction against all strike activities across the country, and brought in federal troops. Thousands of US soldiers joined state militia and deputy marshals paid by the rail companies to attack the workers, shooting dozens. Still, the workers fought back, and workers around the country organised to call a general strike to force Pullman into arbitration. But these efforts were blocked by union leaders and eventually repression broke the strike. This book tells its story, and that of other mass strikes in the US: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/strike-jeremy-brecher https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1985510161634124/?type=3

[todaysdocument]

White House Meeting with civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963.

Collection JFK-WHP: White House Photographs

Series: Abbie Rowe White House Photographs

File Unit: White House Photograph Collection: Abbie Rowe White House Photographs: AR7993B

Image description: About 24 people standing outside the White House. Most of them are men in suits but there is one woman, who is wearing a summer hat. A few people have been identified: Front Row: Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Roy Wilkins, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Walter P. Reuther, Whitney M. Young, A. Philip Randolph. Second Row Second From Left: Rosa Gragg. Top Row Third From Left: James Farmer.

[lightdancer1]

Among the Civil Rights leaders of the 1940s was one Asa Philip Randolph:

The Direct Action movement is often held to have begun with Doctor King in Montgomery. This is not exactly accurate, insofar as it had a true beginning it was with Mr. Randolph, who managed to stare FDR in the eyeball and made him blink. This was done, to boot, during the Second World War and should serve as one of many reminders that the real wartime scenario was nowhere near as rosy as the movies would try to tell you.

Randolph also serves as a connection to the earlier labor movements as well as he led a group called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, from the days when Pullman cars were the high life of luxury and where as with cruise ships today the luxury is dedicated to the customer and the staff had miserable lives at best. Randolph's life shows that history does not move in the kind of rigid periodization that historians use for convenience, that its architects of what are seen as different eras co-exist.

Randolph also remained one of the few exemplars of the older movements able to adjust smoothly to the Cold War and the conditions it created, which was not always true of others. Some, like Robeson and Du Bois, wound up impaled on not simply sympathy for Communism but outright Tankie mentalities. Randolph, like other Labor leaders who actually spent time working and then became a leader of the movement, kept his eye on more realistic goals than turning the USA into the largest Warsaw Pact state.

[dustzvacuumcleaner]

Baby republicans

[weil-weil-lautre]

A Philip Randolph For Jobs and Freedom

[moleshow]

politically speaking there's not really a way around (re-)organizing the private sector. the sort of broad base you need to prevail on big stuff has not been cultivated by the small-is-beautiful approach. you need to be able exert real pressure, and i'm not aware of where you'd get that except from labor. in the short-term that means ensuring that organizing can happen efficiently and effectively--but it's a big lift and will require a lot of effort. consistently. over extended periods of time.

[crunchybutter]

this just feels a little relevant rn.

Edit: alt text credit to the very kind @roamingghost