A Grateful Tribute to A. Philip Randolph,
Who Came So Far by Faith

By F. Finley McRae
Posted  September 2, 2012

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A Labor Day Salute to A. Philip Randolph

On each Labor Day across the United States, historians, political pundits and a wide variety of commentators offer long, sonorous tributes to the men they herald as the nation's greatest union leaders.

Samuel Gompers, Eugene Debs, George Meany and Walter Reuther are usually chief among them.
Almost always, however, A. Phillip Randolph's name is missing from the hallowed pantheon of celebrated labor leaders.

Yet Randolph, a titan among them, who was equipped with a lion's heart, St. Augustine's spirit and soul, Hannibal's generalship and the political and strategic genius to out fox two of the nation's most distinguished presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman, typically receives little, if any commendations, even on Labor Day.

Randolph, the primary organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, unlike the celebrated union leaders, all of them white, was forced to fight two protracted battles--at once--against the powerful  Pullman Company and the American Federation of Labor (AF of L), without resources.

Instead, he lacked strong, public endorsements from a broad coalition of nationally united black clergy, academics and the intelligentsia.

In 1925, the year Randolph accepted the challenge to shepherd the union's national organizing effort by a delegation of porters in Harlem, American blacks were just 60 years removed from chattel slavery.

Much worse, a tidal wave of political and social debasement swept over black America in 1896, when the Supreme Court's Plessey vs., Ferguson decision legalized segregation, a milder form of enslavement. The stage for the court's ignoble decision was set with the demise of Reconstruction, in 1876, and, in 1883, when the justices nullified the Civil Rights Act Congress adopted in 1875.

Booker T. Washington played a public role in the disenfranchisement when he famously declared, in 1895, at the Atlanta Exposition, that blacks would quietly accept menial labor and, essentially, a master-slave relationship in the political arena, rather than continue the long challenge to the "southern way of life. The nation's blacks had not elected, selected, appointed, anointed or consecrated Washington to speak for them or negotiate on their behalf.

That was irrelevant to the southern elites and corporate chiefs above the Mason Dixon Line, who eagerly embraced his wildly applauded surrender that day.

Washington's capitulation did not appease the Klu Klux Klan, which continued to
lynch blacks at its previous pace. As a response an angry W.E.B. Dubois and other activists in the Niagra Movement, many of them white, formed the NAACP in 1909.

In 1916, Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association began a Pan Africanist-based "return to Africa" campaign, which ultimately drew a reported four million members worldwide.

After establishing the "Black Star Line" and other noted enterprises, however, Garvey,  was hounded by J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation (BOI).

On or before, August 25, 1925, Randolph, after first declining to lead the porters, agreed to launch what proved to be a long, protracted war against twin enemies: The Pullman Company and "racism in the house of labor."

Garvey, after a show trial, was subsequently imprisoned the following November and would serve two years of a seven-year sentence before President Calvin Coolidge ordered his release.

Against the backdrop of Garvey's defeat, Randolph and his leadership ability emerged, unannounced and without national fanfare.

With Milton Webster in Chicago, Ashley Totten in New York  and C.L. Dellums in Oakland--but no funds, office staff, organizational budget, telephone or national chapters to rely upon as strategic outposts, Randolph stood tall and strong against every weapon thrown at him by the Pullman Company and its massive, corporate juggernaut.

The challenges to their success were daunting: Porters seen or heard sympathizing with Randolph's organizing efforts were summarily fired. The instant terminations doubled as intimidation tactics and clear, direct warnings to freeze the porters into impotence and apathy.

Randolph, armed mostly with fervent faith and abiding hope, never wavered in his mission as he crossed the nation organizing the porters. The porters, knowing Randolph had no funds to travel by train, slipped him aboard the overnight luxury liners so he could schedule on-going membership drives and speaking engagements to build the union.

Undeterred and high in zeal, although his wardrobe consisted of a suit, two pair of pants, two pair of socks and a pair of shoes, Randolph and his small band of leaders finally forced the AF of L to the table and wrested an all important  charter.

That momentous victory, on August 25, 1935, marked the first time in American history that blacks had elbowed their way to the power banquet exclusively hosted for whites. Without the charter, the porters had lacked federal recognition. Without that official recognition, the porters would not have had a seat at the table where union-won wages, pensions and benefits were decided.

Two years later, in 1937, (exactly 75 years ago) the porters, under Randolph, became the first black inspired, led and organized union to win collective bargaining rights from the Pullman Company or any other major American corporation.

 

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