REFRAMING RANDOLPH
CULTURE, LABOR, HISTORY SERIES
General Editors: Daniel Bender and Kimberley L. Phillips
The Forests Gave Way before Them: The Impact of African Workers on the Anglo-American World, 1650–1850
Frederick C. Knight
Unknown Class: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present
Mark Pittenger
Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915–1940
Michael D. Innis-Jiménez
Ordering Coal: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in the Gilded Age, 1870–1900
Andrew B. Arnold
A Great Conspiracy against Our Race: Italian Immigrant Newspapers and the Construction of Whiteness in the Early Twentieth Century
Peter G. Vellon
Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph
Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
Reframing Randolph
Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph
Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
© 2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
ISBN: 978-0-8147-8594-2 (hardback)
For Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data, please contact the Library of Congress.
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
This book is dedicated to my daughters, Bethany and Emily, and to my wife, Vickie.
—Andrew E. Kersten, Moscow, Idaho
For Clarence Earl Lang, Sr. (1949–2013), who, seated behind the wheel of a Chicago Transit Authority bus, was a beneficiary of Randolph’s many legacies.
—Clarence Lang, Lawrence, Kansas
CONTENTS
Arlene Holt Baker
1 A Reintroduction to Asa Philip Randolph
Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
2 Researching Randolph: Shifting Historiographic Perspectives
Joe William Trotter, Jr.
3 A. Philip Randolph: Emerging Socialist Radical
Eric Arnesen
4 Keeping His Faith: A. Philip Randolph’s Working-Class Religion
Cynthia Taylor
5 Brotherhood Men and Singing Slackers: A. Philip Randolph’s Rhetoric of Music and Manhood
Robert Hawkins
6 “The Spirit and Strategy of the United Front”: Randolph and the National Negro Congress, 1936–1940
Erik S. Gellman
7 Organizing Gender: A. Philip Randolph and Women Activists
Melinda Chateauvert
8 Beyond A. Philip Randolph: Grassroots Protest and the March on Washington Movement
David Lucander
William P. Jones
10 No Exit: A. Philip Randolph and the Ocean Hill–Brownsville Crisis
Jerald Podair
FOREWORD
ARLENE HOLT BAKER
Reframing Randolph gives us a deeper understanding, appreciation, respect, and much needed critical analyses of the complexities of A. Phillip Randolph, who, through his oratory, his written words, and his organizing and mobilizing skills, was able to improve the working conditions and economic lives of African Americans and move America’s social and civil rights landscape closer to the promise of equality for all.
These roads were sometimes straight, sometimes rocky, and sometimes narrow, but all of them led to the improvement of self, the improvement of the human condition, and the improvement of the working conditions for black workers in general and the Pullman Porters in particular. These roads also led Randolph to his long envisioned plan of a march for freedom on the nation’s capital. In reflecting on his role in the labor and civil rights movements as researched and analyzed by the historians who contributed to this book, I am reminded of the importance of Randolph in those movements and how his labors and legacy indirectly and directly touched my own life.
Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, during the early 1950s and 1960s, I knew the world of Jim Crow and the suffering that many families and many in my neighborhood endured both emotionally and economically from those unjust laws of segregation