Washington, D.C. Then and Now
BELL, DANIEL
Thinking Aloud Washington, D.C. Then and Now By Daniel Bell The presence of Barack Obama in the White House reminded me of my first trip to Washington, D.C. It was 1942 and I was...
...No one would ever call him “Phil,” the way David Dubinsky was called “Dave,” or Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers was called “Sidney...
...Washington, D.C., he reminded me, was a Southern city...
...In the interim Randolph had organized “The Committee Against Jim Crow” in the services, later renamed “The League for NonViolent Civil Disobedience...
...The porter retorted, “Sir, I’m not smiling...
...He replied, “That man sure has a powerful magnetism...
...And in Washington, D.C...
...military...
...Roosevelt was once reported as telling someone who asked for a favor from the White House, “Clear it with Sidney...
...During the several days we spent in Washington Randolph saw a number of officials in the War Department (as the Defense Department was then called), and finally FDR...
...President Harry S. Truman abolished segregation in the Armed Forces through Executive Order 9981, issued July 26, 1948...
...When he left the Oval Office I asked him what the President said, in order to prepare a press release...
...It was 1942 and I was accompanying A. (for Asa) Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters...
...Army, of whom more than 10,000 are officers...
...But it was the New Deal’s passage of the Amended Railway Labor Act of 1934 that granted porters the right under Federal law to bargain collectively...
...Often some of them were quite obsequious in the hope of earning bigger tips...
...No restaurant would serve us...
...The most startling thing about my initial visit to Washington was that we could only eat dinner at a place in Union Station, the railroad terminal in the southeast corner of the capital...
...A large percentage of Brotherhood members were the porters who maintained sleeping compartments on the New York Central and Penn Railroad overnight runs between New York and Chicago...
...When we made our reservation and then showed up, we were told that there had been a confusion with the reservation, or that the restaurant was full, though we could see that it was half empty...
...Randolph de facto became a leading spokesman for the black community...
...He had been born in the South and was raised there...
...He was going to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt about desegregating the U.S...
...He made promises,” Randolph answered...
...Randolph himself was courtly and soft-spoken...
...At a precocious age I had become the managing editor of The New Leader, then a weekly published in newspaper format that was close to the labor movement...
...It was not until 1948 that he gained his military desegregation objective...
...Today, there are 105,000 AfricanAmerican members in the U.S...
...I’m showing my teeth...
...Daniel Bell is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard...
...One story has it that a business traveler disembarking in Chicago said to a porter, “George [they were always called George], why are you smiling all the time...
...After two years of bitter negotiation the Pullman Company agreed to a contract in 1937...
...Before you know it, you think you have something which you haven’t really got...
...I was to help with publicity after the meeting...
...The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded by Randolph in 1925, was the first serious effort to organize the Pullman Company’s employees...
...I asked again...
...But what did he say...
...The membership of the Brotherhood jumped to about 7,000, and it became affiliated with the American Federation of Labor...
...I was furious, but Randolph, always cool in his manner, said nothing...
...a world-class African-American citizen sits in the White House...
Vol. 92 • January 2009 • No. 1
