|
|
          ** UNIT PAGES **     Visit the Retiree Resource page for links to the CWA Retired Members' Council and related websites 
|
Born Asa Randolph in 1889 in Florida, he was the first national African-American labor leader. He became the first black vice president of the AFL-CIO and was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor. Randolph, as a young man, settled in Harlem in New York City, went to college at night and got involved in political activities. In 1917, he launched a monthly magazine, "Messenger," focusing on economic and political action among America's blacks. In 1925, black sleeping car porters with the Pullman Company asked Randolph to help them organize. The Pullman Company threatened and fired workers, but Randolph and the porters persisted. In 1937, the company finally signed a contract, agreeing to raise wages and cut porters' long work hours in half. It was the first time that a white employer in the United States signed an agreement with a black union leader. Now widely known, Randolph took on national fights for equality. In 1947, he urged blacks to boycott the armed services by refusing to register for the draft to protest the separation of black and white troops. The boycott led President Harry Truman to sign an order banning discrimination and segregation in the military. In 1955, Randolph was elected the first black vice president the AFL-CIO. And, in 1964, his lifetime of work was recognized with a Medal of Freedom, presented by President Lyndon Johnson. The medal is the country's highest award for civilians. A year later, Randolph founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organization to enhance the role African-Americans play in their communities and in labor unions. He died in 1979. Randolph quotes:"The very nature of a struggle on the part of labor and minorities... renders it inevitable that labor and minorities join the camp of and stand by and for the forces of democracy. For it is only within the framework of democracy that labor and minorities can achieve freedom, equality and justice." - Randolph, to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters "We must have faith that this society, divided by ethnicity and by class, and subject to profound social pressures, can one day become a nation of equals, and banish ethnic prejudices to the limbo of oblivion from which it shall never emerge." "In concert with their fellow workers, black people can take decisive control of their own destinies; with a union, they can approach their employers as proud and upright equals, not as trembling and bowing slaves. Indeed, a solid union contract is, in a very real sense, another Emancipation Proclamation"
Home Page | Committees | Contact Us
|
