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A. Phillip Randolph Facts

A. Phillip Randolph Facts
A. Phillip Randolph was an African-American who was active in the labor and civil rights movements during the early twentieth century. Over the course of his career, Randolph helped organize a number of different unions, as well as protest movements and marches. He is credited as being one of the leaders behind the efforts to desegregate the armed forces in 1948 and was one of the older organizers of the 1963 "March on Washington." Randolph was born Asa Philip Randolph on April 15, 1889 to James and Elizabeth Randolph in Crescent City, Florida. His father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who raised Asa and his brother with a moral compass and to respect education. Randolph Lucille Green in 1913; the couple remained married until her death in 1963.
Interesting A. Phillip Randolph Facts:
Randolph moved to New York City in 1911 and attended City College, which accepted black students.
He acted in a number of productions and had dreams of becoming a professional actor, but politics and activism proved to be Randolph's true calling.
Not longer after moving to New York, Randolph was introduced to Marxist philosophy and became a member of the Socialist Party of America
Like many Socialists of the period, Randolph was for the most part opposed to immigration.
Randolph was elected president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925.
Randolph worked with civil rights leader Bayard Rustin during the 1940s and 1950s to protest segregation and help pass some early anti-segregation laws such as Fair Employment Act of 1941, which banned discrimination in the defense industry.
Much of Randolph's early work in civil rights focused on his attempts to influence Congress to pass a national anti-lynching law.
Randolph helped organize a 1942 event at Madison Square Garden in New York City in which 18,000 blacks attended to hear speeches against discrimination in the war industry.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Randolph worked with Martin Luther King Junior to protest segregation in schools.
Randolph was one of the founders of the monthly magazine The Messenger. It was an anti-war and anti-lynching periodical that began publication in 1917.
Although Randolph never advocated violence, he was not necessarily a pacifist, believing that it was fine to use force to protect oneself or others.
He was an admirer of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi and believed that some of his tactics and ideas could be replicated in the American civil rights movement.
In 1950, along with other leading figures in the civil rights movement, Randolph formed the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Some of Randolph's tactics in the civil rights movement included mass voter registration and encouraging blacks to vote as a bloc, which were both advocated by later civil rights leaders and still are today.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964.
Randolph died on May 16, 1979 in New York City at the age of ninety.
A number of libraries, streets, and schools in Florida, New York, and a few other places have been named for Randolph posthumously.


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