A. Philip Randolph
Born April 15, 1889 (Crescent City, Florida)
Died May 16, 1979 (New York, New York)
Labor activist
Civil rights activist
American labor leader and civil rights crusader A. Philip Randolph was instrumental in shaping some of the first federal laws designed to give African Americans equal rights in the workplace. For several decades Randolph served as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union of black employees in the passenger rail service industry. He rose to national prominence as its leader and then turned his attention to the manufacturing industry when the factories were preparing for wartime production in the early 1940s. By warning U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) that he planned to lead black workers in a civil rights march on Washington, Randolph convinced Roosevelt to sign an executive order that forced factories with government contracts to stop discriminating against African American workers. Many years later Randolph did lead a march on Washington when he was the behind-the-scenes organizer of the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) delivered his famous speech, "I Have a Dream."
Early Ambitions
Born Asa Philip Randolph in April 1889, Randolph was a Florida native and the son of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church.
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