A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American railwayman, trade unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American-led labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a prominent voice. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against racist labor practices helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully maintained pressure, so that President Harry S. Truman proposed a new Civil Rights Act and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 in 1948, promoting fair employment and anti-discrimination policies in federal government hiring, and ending racial segregation in the armed services. Randolph was born and raised in Florida. He was educated at Cookman Institute, then moved to New York City as part of the early Great Migration, leaving behind the discriminatory Jim Crow–era south. There he became convinced that overcoming racism required collective action and he was drawn to socialism and workers' rights. He unsuccessfully ran for state office on the socialist ticket in the early 1920s, but found more success in organizing for African American workers' rights. In 1963, Randolph was the head of the March on Washington, organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Randolph inspired the "Freedom Budget", sometimes called the "Randolph Freedom budget", which aimed to deal with the economic problems facing the Black community. It was published by the Randolph Institute in January 1967 as "A Freedom Budget for All Americans".