1889-1979
Labor and Civil Rights Leader

Early Years.

A leading labor organizer and civil rights leader, A. Philip Randolph's nonviolent activism against American racism improved the position of blacks in the twentieth century. Randolph believed that improving the economic position of blacks was essential to achieving justice for them within American society. Randolph grew up near Jacksonville, Florida, reading Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto while still in high school. His father, an itinerant minister, wanted him to enter the clergy, but his early sense of social injustice against blacks led him toward a career in political activism. He attended City College of New York, working as a porter, a waiter, and an elevator operator to support himself.

At City College.

While at City College Randolph met Chandler Owen, a law student at Columbia University who shared his socialist vision, and the two started a small...