Any serious discussion on blacks in the United States labor movement always includes some prominent mention of A. Philip Randolph for his role as organizer and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters for forty-three years. Randolph is generally depicted as the single most important figure to sustain the initial twelve-year struggle of the nation's first black union to gain a negotiated contract from one of the country's wealthiest and most powerful companies. Many historians also call Randolph the father of the modern Civil Rights Movement. He organized the first planned nonviolent march on Washington in 1941--called off at the eleventh hour only when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 eliminating employment discrimination in government and the defense industries. Randolph also is credited as a major force in influencing President Dwight D. Eisenhower to outlaw segregation in the military, as well as with organizing the August 1963 march on Washington in which Dr.
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