The Total Vision of A. Philip Randolph

...But he also felt that if the boycott were successful and spread elsewhere, it would create jobs for Negroes as bus drivers and in restaurants, parks and libraries...

...Such were Randolph's influence and authority that another Executive Order was issued to comply with his demands...

...We are still very much in need of the guidance of A. Philip Randolph...

...This victory not only resulted in the first contract signed by a white employer with a Negro labor leader...

...Again, he has rejected elitism—be it in the form of W. E. B. DuBois' concept of "a talented tenth" or of a proposal for black capitalism—because of his democratic commitment and his opposition to programs that would economically benefit a minority at the expense of the majority...

...Justice is never given, it is exacted...

...Realizing that the only benefactors of these practices were the exploiters themselves, Randolph embarked upon a crusade opposing any form of strike-breaking by Negroes, advocating instead their full integration into the American trade union movement...

...He was speaking of full employment and a guaranteed income, the rebuilding of our cities, the provision of superior schools for all of our children, and free medical care for all of our citizens...

...Local March on Washington Committees nevertheless began to spring up across the country, and as preparations assumed larger proportions, the pressure on President Roosevelt mounted...

...On June 20, 1941, less than two weeks before the scheduled date of the march, the President issued Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in the War industries and setting up the Fair Employment Practices Committee...

...Martin Luther King organize the Montgomery bus boycott, he likewise had a dual objective in mind...

...Unlike Randolph, their vision is fractured and constricted...

...The bscp enabled thousands of black workers to earn higher wages...

...He has stood firm against racial separatism—whether advocated in the 1920s by Marcus Garvey or in the 1960s by black nationalists—because of his belief in integration and his knowledge that separatism would mean the continued exploitation and degradation of black people...

...A. PHILIP RANDOLPH Although he was of course concerned that Negroes in the Army be treated with dignity, the more fundamental difficulty he saw was that segregation would exclude them from high-paying officer positions as well as from training programs in skills they would need for post-service civilian employment...

...In both the earlier and the current cases there is a failure to confront the overriding fact of poverty...

...In no other way can we at last become a nation that is at peace with itself...

...Since the political strategy of mass protest has become commonplace during the last decade, it is all too often forgotten that this was developed by Randolph at a time when the use of such tactics by Negroes was unheard of...

...In 1955, when Randolph urged me to go South to help Dr...

...Brotherhood members, armed with the sophistication they had acquired through their economic battles and making use of the mobility provided by their jobs, carried the message of equality to Negroes in every state in the nation...

...He wrote of the dramatic plan in the Negro press and agitated for it on the street corners of Harlem and elsewhere...

...And in the course of fulfillment, there is always the danger that the felt need deriving from a perception of fundamental and historic injustices will conflict with the required political strategy, which by its nature must respond to circumstances of the moment...

...it is won...

...Thus in 1941, with the advent of World War II, Randolph conceived the idea of a massive Negro march on Washington to protest the exclusion of black people from jobs in the defense industries...

...Randolph did not believe that blacks should isolate themselves, though, so he added: "But Negroes must not fight for their liberation alone...

...Randolph thus stands out among Negro leaders of Bayard Rustin, a previous contributor to these pages, is director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute...

...While he has felt that Negro salvation is an internal process of struggle and self-affirmation, he has recognized the political necessity of forming alliances with men of other races and the moral necessity of comprehending the black movement as part of a general effort to expand human freedom...

...I am in sympathy with this search to a degree, as was Randolph in 1940 when he wrote: ". . . the Negro and the other darker races must look to themselves for freedom...

...Now that the cry of black nationalism has arisen from some Negroes, they have transferred their concern for brotherhood to the need for blacks to achieve pride and identity and for whites to purge themselves of guilt and racism...

...Freedom is never granted...

...At the 1966 White House conference, "To Fulfill These Rights," he proposed the Freedom Budget, calling for an annual Federal expenditure of $18.5 billion for 10 years to wipe out poverty...

...A people degraded by poverty and a caste system of segregation, for example, will have the inchoate desire for dignity and liberation, but that desire will remain unfulfilled until it is given programmatic direction by a political movement...

...Most mistakenly, many have now abandoned the objective of building an integrated movement to achieve economic equality...

...His interest in educational desegregation, too, transcended the problem of dignity or of Negroes and whites attending the same schools together, for he was concerned with the growing threat posed to Negro employment by cybernetics and automation...

...He naturally felt that Negroes had a right to sit where they wanted to on public accommodations...

...He has identified with the spiritual longings of black people, but has insisted that economic security is the precondition for pride and dignity...

...THINKING ALOUD The Total Vision of A. Philip Randolph By Bayard Rustin Social struggle, if it is to effectively uplift masses of impoverished and exploited individuals, must articulate and satisfy their diverse needs as well as reconcile objectives that are often considered contradictory...

...And he was not being unrealistic...

...Randolph, however, refused to be misled by transient emotion and persisted in his demand for an economic program...

...the 20th century as a man of both principled idealism and practical accomplishment...

...Today there are two million black trade unionists in America who have attained economic dignity, job security and protection against racial discrimination...

...They formed what was in effect a network for the distribution of political literature...

...They must join sound, broad, liberal, social movements that seek to preserve American democracy and advance the cause of social and religious freedom...

...Pursuing his conviction that the Negro can never be socially and politically free until he is economically secure, Randolph worked to build an alliance between black Americans and the trade union movement...

...The reason for this, I think, is that they have failed to view the problem of inequality in its totality...

...In 1948, for instance, he traveled to Washington to speak with President Truman on the problem of segregation and discrimination in the Armed Forces...

...Randolph's activities on behalf of black workers, however, did not stop with this broad crusade...

...Even when his actions have seemed to be directed toward noneconomic ends, Randolph has been guided by a persistent concern for the Negro's economic welfare...

...Randolph's position is not only morally correct but strategically necessary, for Negroes today are in danger of letting an emotional imperative destroy the possibility for social and economic liberation...

...if this proved not to be the case, once having gained access to an institution, they would use the same techniques for obtaining employment that they had originally used to open it up...

...Today there are many Negroes and liberals who reject the idea of this coalition...

...Freedom and justice must be struggled for by the oppressed of all lands and races, and the struggle must be continuous, for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationships...

...Once more thousands of new jobs were opened up to Negroes through Randolph's efforts, and black people began to sense their power as an organized group and the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action tactics...

...A decade later, we can see even more clearly the devasting effect the combination of automation and inferior segregated education has had on the employment of blacks...

...It is hardly surprising, therefore, that E. D. Nixon, one of the main organizers of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus protest which marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, was the head of the local bscp division and himself a porter...

...And by his presence, he poses a challenge to his followers: to build, through means that are democratic and nonviolent, a just society in which all men need not fear poverty, and in which men of all races, graced with the dignity, that comes from a full life, need not fear each other...

...Their tactic was to exploit the Negro's grievous need for employment by inviting him to scab on unionized white workers striking for just demands...

...At the same time President Kennedy introduced what was to become the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and in the minds of some people this became the main focus of the March...

...It was Randolph's perception of the economic basis of Negro freedom that enabled him to grasp the unique significance of the 1963 March on Washington...

...Randolph was not speaking here of tax incentives for industry, voluntary assistance by private individuals or community action programs...

...From his earliest beginnings as a follower of Eugene V. Debs and a colleague of Norman Thomas, he has understood that social and political freedom must be rooted in economic freedom, and all his subsequent actions have sprung from this basic premise...

...Salvation for a race, nation, or class must come from within...

...Indeed, many liberals have become obsessed with the psychological aspects of the racial problem to the point of neglecting its economic dimensions...

...If these groups could unite, they would form a majority capable of democratizing the economic, social and political power of this nation...

...During the early years of the civil rights movement these liberals, unlike Randolph, favored integration primarily as a means of fostering better relations between blacks and whites...

...I think it is part of the greatness of A. Philip Randolph that throughout his 60 years as a leader of Negro Americans, he has maintained a total vision of the goal of freedom for his people and of the means for achieving it...

...it also became a symbol of what could happen if black people organized and bargained collectively...

...The idea was scoffed at or scorned by most people in the white community, and it was so unprecedented that even many Negroes had difficulty believing it could be made into a reality...

...What is more important, it became the central focus of the early civil rights protest movement...

...In 1925, he began the long and arduous campaign to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (bscp...

...He has adhered to nonviolence as a moral principle and as the most effective means of political struggle...

...As he reaches his 80th birthday, this April 14, the freshness and the comprehensiveness of his vision remains evident...

...Finally, as a result of his deep faith in democracy, he has realized that social change does not depend upon the decisions of the few, but on direct political action through the mobilization of masses of individuals to gain economic and social justice...

...They are emphasizing blackness to the point of isolating themselves from broad political movements for social justice— forgetting that as one-tenth of the population, they cannot by themselves bring about necessary social changes such as those embodied in the Freedom Budget...

...His conception was that where Negroes were free to come, they would be free to work...

...Aware that the central problem Negroes faced was no longer simply one of civil rights but of economic rights—for the one would lack social substance without the other—he called for a March on Washington which brought a quarter of a million Americans to the nation's capital to demand "Jobs and Freedom...

...And this in fact is what has happened throughout the South...

...He believed that Negroes could not achieve economic advancement without fighting for it, but he was no less profoundly aware that as an oppressed people, the very act of struggling would confer upon them a dignity they had been denied...

...His first efforts met with strong opposition from Southern oligarchs and powerful business leaders who had traditionally tried to use the Negro to subvert the labor movement...

...He conceived of it as marking the termination of the mass protest period—-during which Negroes had destroyed the Jim Crow institutions in the South—and the inauguration of an era of massive action at the ballot box designed to bring about new economic programs...

...Since education is the basis for economic advancement, he knew that access to all educational facilities and opportunities was vital to the Negroes...

...There are some Negroes, for example, who are advocating racial separatism and black nationalism because they are engaged in a very significant psychological quest for identity...

...Despite fierce resistance from railway companies and the hardships of the Depression, the bscp eventually won certification in 1937...

...He proposed, along with the Freedom Budget, a political strategy for achieving it that calls for building a coalition of Negroes, labor, liberals, religious organizations, and students...

...He was speaking, very simply and without rhetoric, of achieving equality in America...