This whole information is directly from the links shown.
Gentle Warrior: Asus Philip Randolph (1889 - 1979)
Link:
http://www.apri.org//ht/d/sp/i/225/pid/225
- He was called the most dangerous black in America.
- He led 250,000 people in the historic 1963 March on Washington.
- He spoke for all the dispossessed: Blacks, poor Whites, Puerto Ricans, Indians and Mexican Americans.
- He attained for Black workers their rightful at in the house of Labor.
- He won the fight to ban discrimination in the armed forces.
- He organized the 1957-prayer pilgrimage for the civil rights bill.
- He was President of the Institute, bearing his name, and President Emeritus of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the union he built.
- Harry S. Truman. President Truman signed an order commanding that there would be an end to this kind of discrimination not only in the armed forces, but also in federal civil service jobs.
- In 1963, Mr. Randolph's struggle for equality for oppressed people was reached when he headed the famous "March on Washington,'' in which more than 250.000 Americans joined together under the slogan of "Jobs and Freedom."
- The story of Randolph the labor leader is the story of many beginnings, a tale of many defeats and many victories. Even in defeat he sowed the seed that afterwards blossomed and bore fruit-for Black workers and White workers alike.
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_brother.html
- Mr. Randolph's Character: In 1936, A. Philip Randolph was drafted presidency of a new organization called the National Negro Congress. The NNC was made up of a number of groups, which planned to build a Black mass movement, by working with and through trade unions. Although the NNC was successful in a number of organization drives led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), when Mr. Randolph realized he had come under Communist control, he quit.
- Throughout the hard years of struggle to obtain dignity and decent treatment for porters, Mr. Randolph forgot that there were other workers that also needed help. As one observer wrote ''He became a familiar and lonely figure on the floor of AFL-ClO conventions" to his role as champion of the underdog. He was conscience of organized labor in seeking to get the trade union to set its own house in order and to remove the last remnants of racial discrimination from ranks of the AFL-CIO.
- Mr. Randolph's political statement: He spoke for all other dispossessed , Mexicans Americans, Indians, Puerto Ricans, and poor Whites alike.
- A. Philip Randolph, the labor leader, is also a dreamer of dreams He has tried to put flesh and bones on his dreams by working for a labor movement that would be free of all prejudice and which would play a key role in changing society for the better.
- Mr. Randolph's ideals: At the heart of A. Philip Randolph's vision as a socialist is his belief that a decent and well-paying job is the first step towards social and political freedom.
- For the socialist ideals on which his political wisdom is built, Mr. Randolph looked to the giants of American socialism—Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas.
- As a socialist, Mr. Randolph believes that workers and their labor unions are the key forces in any political effort to redistribute society's wealth more justly.
- Mr. Randolph has continuously advised Black people to develop political alliances with other groups labor, liberal and civil rights groups—to fight for common aims.
- The agent for spreading Mr. Randolph's socialism was a magazine called the MESSENGER, founded in 1917, "the only magazine of scientific radicalism in the world published by Negroes." He co-edited the magazine with Chandler Owen, a fellow socialist who came to be Mr. Randolph's closest friend.
- Mr. Randolph's believes: He is a firm believer in both integration and non-violence. As an integrationist he opposed the "Back-to-Africa" movement of Marcus Garvey in the 1920's, as he has opposed the separatist beliefs of the "Black Power" advocates of today.
- At the same time, Mr. Randolph has rejected violence as a tactic of struggle, on both moral and practical grounds. A. Philip Randolph has not seen the problem of Black people in America as the problem of one isolated group. He views the condition of American Blacks as the symptom of a larger social illness, an illness which is caused by an unfair distribution of power, wealth, and resources.
- Though Mr. Randolph was an integrationist, he believed that organizations which had come into existence to wage the Black and working class struggle, ought to be headed by the leaders from those groups.
- Mr. Randolph was definitely opposed to the war. He believed that the American idea of ''making the world safe for democracy'' was outright falsity, and "a tremendous offense to the intelligence of the Blacks because at that time the Blacks were being lynched and denied the right to vote, in the South especially, and were the victims of segregation and discrimination all over the nation
- They managed to get out under the custody of Seymour Stedman, a socialist lawyer, and they promptly continued their public protest against the war. World War I ended just one day before Mr. Randolph was scheduled to leave for war himself as a new draftee.
A. Philip Randolph Institute: What We Support Today?
Link:
http://www.apri.org/ht/d/sp/i/237/pid/237
- Civil rights, strong anti-discrimination measures and affirmative action
- Policies to promote a decent wage, high growth, full employment economy
- Labor law reform and worker health and safety protections
- Decent minimum living standards for all, including anti-poverty programs, a fair minimum wage and a comprehensive "safety net"
- Universal, affordable health care
- Family leave and child care
- Progressive and fair tax policies
- International workers' rights and fair trade Education and training programs
- Education and training programs
Biographical Notes on Bayard Rustin 1912 - 1987
Link:
http://www.apri.org//ht/d/sp/i/227/pid/227
- Mr. Bayard Rustin was active in the struggle for human rights and economic justice for over 50 years.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin toured the country conducting Race Relations Institutes designed to facilitate communication and understanding between racial groups.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin was active in A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement, and became the first field secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
- In 1942, the FOR dispatched him to California and the American Friends Service Committee to help protect the property of Japanese- Americans held in detention.
- In 1947, Bayard Rustin took part in a demonstration to test enforcement of the 1946 Irene Morgan case decision outlawing discrimination in interstate travel. Known as the “Journey of Reconciliation” this protest was a model for Freedom Rides of the 1960’s.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin was instrumental in securing President Truman’s order eliminating segregation in the Armed Forces.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin extensive background in the theory, strategies, and tactics of nonviolent action proved invaluable and were the foundation of this close association with Dr. King.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin organized the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957, the National Youth Marches for Integrated Schools in 1958 and 1959, and was the Deputy Director and Chief Organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which, at the time, was the largest demonstration in the Nation’s history
- In 1964 Mr. Bayard Rustin helped found the A. Philip Randolph Institute, names for his mentor, the noted labor and civil rights activist.
- A long-time supporter of worker’s rights, Mr. Bayard Rustin participated in many strikes
- While working to promote democracy at home, Mr. Bayard Rustin also supported human rights struggles worldwide.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin was frequently arrested for protesting Britain’s colonial rule in Africa.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin had a long involvement with refugee affairs.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin was a Vice Chairman o the International Rescue Committee he traveled the world working to secure food, medical care, education, and proper resettlement for refugees.
- Mr. Bayard Rustin made numerous fact-finding visits to the Middle East and wrote many columns and articles on that troubled area.
March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom
Link to Civil Rights Movement Veterans(must read from there):
http://www.crmvet.org/info/mowjl.htm
Origins of the March
- For more than two decades, A. Philip Randolph dreams of a massive march on Washington for jobs and justice.
- Back in 1941, with the support of Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, Randolph had threatened to mobilize 100,000 Blacks to march on Washington to protest segregation in the armed forces and employment discrimination in the expanding war industries.
- Executive Order 8802: 1941 - Defense plants initially resisted hiring African-Americans. But in 1941, A. Philip Randolph (front, center), president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened to have 100,000 blacks march on Washington to protest job discrimination. President Franklin Roosevelt yielded to Randolph's demand. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, prohibiting discrimination in defense jobs or government.
- Executive Order 8802 constituted the first major federal government response to the plight of blacks since Reconstruction. Executive Order 8802 has been called a second Emancipation Proclamation. Sociologist William Julius Wilson has pointed out the war accelerated the entry of blacks into goods-producing industries and helped reduce black poverty.
- Document of the Executive Order 8802 : http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/historical-docs/doc-content/images/exec-order-8802-def-discrim-l.jpg&c=/historical-docs/doc-content/images/exec-order-8802-def-discrim.caption.html
- Implications: On June 11, 1963 — the same day as President Kennedy's address to the nation on civil rights — SCLC leaders announce plans to demonstrate in Washington for new civil rights legislation. They call for: "Massive, militant, monumental sit-ins on Congress..." and "Massive acts of civil disobedience all over this nation. We will tie up public transportation by laying our bodies prostrate on runways of airports, across railroad tracks, and in bus depots." Later that night Medgar Evers is assassinated.
- On June 22nd, President Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders at the White House to get them to cancel the march.
Coalition Politics
- On July 2nd, Randolph and King convene a summit meeting in New York of the "Big Six" to plan a united action in Washington for "Jobs and Freedom."
- Roy Wilkins makes it clear that the NAACP — the largest and best funded of all the civil rights organizations — will not participate in any event that includes any form of civil disobedience.
- The call to mobilize 100,000 protesters has inevitably created a numbers game in which success or failure will be judged by turnout. To get that many people to Washington requires chartering and filling more than 2,000 busses.
- Though JFK publicly supports the march, behind the scenes his administration moves to limit and control it.
- To reduce the numbers who can participate they demand that it be held on a weekday — a working day — rather than on a weekend.
- Politically, they want to prevent any placards or banners critical of the administration — only officially approved signs can be carried. Wilkins insists on acceptance of all these restrictions as the price of NAACP support, and the march is scheduled for Wednesday, August 28 — just 8 weeks away.
- Deeply suspicious of Kennedy and the traditional, conservative Black leadership, many SNCC activists fear the march is an effort to co-opt and contain rising Black militancy. Others fear it will be an empty gesture — a demonstration without organizing — that distracts and undermines their grassroots efforts in the Deep South; to them, change does not come from the top by appealing to a government that cares nothing for those at the bottom of society, but rather by building up political power from below.
- On the day before the march, twenty or so SNCC activists led by Bob Moses picket the Department of Justice. He carries a sign reading: "When there is no justice what is the state but a robber band enlarged?" All Tuesday night they hold vigil and on Wednesday morning some of them participate in the march, others do not.
- Yet many in SNCC support the march, believing that any form of direct action, especially large-scale action, helps break down the fear and isolation that play such a large role in the South's culture of oppression.
- The march is also a chance to educate the nation about the issues, the Freedom Movement, the courage of people in struggle, and the suffering that Blacks are forced to endure.
The March Demands
Eventually, a set of 10 demands for the march is agreed upon:
The 10 Demands of the March on Washington
*
Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress — without compromise or filibuster — to guarantee all Americans:
Access to all public accommodations
Decent housing
Adequate and integrated education
The right to vote
Withholding of Federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists.
*
Desegregation of all school districts in 1963.
*
Enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment — reducing Congressional representation of states where citizens are disfranchised.
*
A new Executive Order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funds.
*
Authority for the Attorney General to institute injunctive suits when any Constitutional right is violated.
*
A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — Negro and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.
*
A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living. (Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.)
[The minimum wage at the time of the march was $1.15/hour. After adjusting for inflation, $1.15 in 1963 is equal to $8.78 in 2013. Today in 2013, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25, significantly lower than what it was 50 years ago. After adjusting for inflation, the $2.00/hour minimum wage called for in the March demands would be equal to a minimum wage of $15.27 today, more than twice what it actually is.]
A broadened Fair Labor Standards Act to include all areas of employment which are presently excluded.
*
A federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination by federal, state, and municipal governments, and by employers, contractors, employment agencies, and trade unions.
Building the March
- Mr. Rustin sets up headquarters in a Harlem walk-up tenement at 170 W. 130th Street near 7th Avenue
- Mrs. Rachelle Horowitz of the Workers Defense League takes on the enormous and critical task of coordinating the busses, trains, planes, and auto caravans that will carry marchers across the country.
- Tens of thousands of marchers are brought to Washington on busses chartered and paid for by unions. Walter Reuther of the UAW is added to the march committee as a labor representative.
- Women form the backbone of the Freedom Movement. Though men get most of the publicity and official positions, it is women who play the key leadership roles on the ground. But not a single woman is asked to speak from the platform at either the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial. Singers Marian Anderson, Eva Jessye, Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, and Joan Baez are included as performers, but women such as Ella Baker and Dorothy Height (whose National Council of Negro Women is far more active in the struggle than Whitney Young's Urban League) are not invited to speak on substantive issues. When Randolph agrees to address the all-male National Press Club (no female reporters allowed), Anna Hedgeman and other women on the march staff protest to the committee. The leaders refuse to add any women to the speakers list, but in a minor concession they agree that Myrlie Evers can briefly acknowledge Daisy Bates, Diane Nash, Mrs. Herbert Lee, Rosa Parks, and Gloria Richardson from the platform (Myrlie is unable to attend, so Daisy Bates substitutes for her).
Fear and Hysteria
- The Movement-related violence of recent years has been perpetrated by white racists and white cops against peaceful, nonviolent, demonstrators. Nevertheless, the Kennedy administration, the mainstream press, and the white establishment are obsessed by fears of Black protesters erupting into looting and violence on the streets of Washington.
- A "State of Emergency" is declared.
- The entire DC police force is mobilized along with 500 reserves and 2,500 members of the National Guard. Some 4,000 Army soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets are stationed across the Potomac at Fort Myer, and 15,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division are placed on alert
The Rolling of the Busses
- On Tuesday morning a large crowd gathers in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park where they had faced the snarling dogs and endured Bull Connor's high pressure hoses.
- In the morning hours of August 28, more than 2,000 busses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered aircraft, and uncounted autos converge on Washington. The regularly scheduled planes, trains, and busses are filled to capacity. And in DC itself — "Chocolate City," at that time the only major metropolis in America with a Black majority population — tens of thousands, young and old, step out of their front doors and head for the gathering point — the towering spire of the Washington Monument.
Marching for Jobs & Freedom
Official Program for the March on Washington (1963)
link:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc_large_image.php?doc=96
Original Draft of SNCC Chairman John Lewis' Speech to the March link:
http://www.crmvet.org/info/mowjl.htm
Martin Luther King Jr. speech link:
http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
- The Kennedys, the media, the Movement leaders, all try to define and control the march. But in the end, it is the marchers themselves who take over and forever stamp the event as a mass peoples' protest, a peaceful expression of their deepest aspirations of human freedom, and a joyous celebration of unity.
- Effect on those who marched. The people most strongly affected by any direct action protest are those who participate in it.
Effect on the Country. Millions of Americans, Black and white, watch the march and rally on TV. For most of them, this is their first direct exposure to the Freedom Movement beyond brief sound-bites and newspaper interpretations. While the march does little to change the minds of committed segregationists,
for the rest of the population the dignity, strength, purpose, and discipline of the freedom marchers has a positive affect.
A national poll reports that more than 75% of white Americans support ending segregation in public facilities, equal job opportunities, "good" housing for Blacks, and integrated schools. Two-thirds of them support passage of Kennedy's civil rights bill. But, 97% of whites oppose preferential hiring of Blacks to make up for past discrimination, the great majority oppose any Federal legislation against housing discrimination, and 56% oppose any further protests by Blacks.
In 1963, fear of Communism dominates the political thinking of a great many white Americans. Most Blacks have long since dismissed "red menace" and "Communist plot" smears against civil rights activists by racists such as Hoover of the FBI, and segregationist Senators such as Eastland and Thurmond. But red-baiting attacks on the Freedom Movement still influence a large number of whites.
Now, at least for some of the millions of whites who watch the march and King's entire 19-minute speech live on national TV — and hear for the first time, not just a few sound-bites but the full content of a freedom sermon — those slanders of foreign-subversion and secret plots begin losing credibility.
Effect on Congress. Before, during, and after the march, members of Congress vow in strident chorus that it will not influence or affect their votes in any way, shape, or form. But as the elders teach us, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
In the 86 years since the end of Reconstruction, not a single piece of effective, race-related civil rights legislation had been signed into law. In the two years following the March on Washington, the two most effective civil rights bills ever enacted, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are passed. It is the Freedom Movement as a whole that forces passage of these acts — not the march alone — but the march does make clear to legislators from rural states and suburban districts outside the South that at least some of their constituents, Black and white, do care about civil rights, and that those constituents are watching how they vote in Congress. Since the crucial votes to overcome the Southern filibusters against the two bills are extremely close, a shift of even one or two votes makes a critical difference.
But while the march does affect Congress in regards to basic civil rights, it has little affect on the economic issues that form a key portion of the 10 demands. There are no Black Senators, and only five Black Representatives in the House. They and their progressive allies are unable to move federal legislation on open housing. Segregated, "separate but equal," school systems are slowly being integrated, but adequate education for all remains an unfulfilled dream.
Unemployment remains high — doubly so for non-whites — and the call for dignified jobs at decent wages falls on deaf ears, as do demands to increase the minimum wage to a living wage.
Effect on the Freedom Movement. The March dramatically confirms the national scope of the Civil Rights Movement and provides a powerful counterpoint to the sense of political isolation experienced by many southern Black communities facing white oppression. Its size and power provide new impetus and energy to protests across the South. As reported by the Southern Regional Council, in the three months immediately after the March, protests erupt in 41 southern cities and towns, resulting in more than 5,000 arrests.
Effect on Black Americans. Looking back on the march later, Evelyn Cunningham, New York Editor for the Pittsburgh Courier, recalls:
I must've cried for an hour and a half at one point during the march. Part of it was sheer happiness, part of it was pride, and part of it was my family. I'm steeped in my respect for my people. After the march, I thought, 'Oh my God, we're almost there — God, was I wrong. — Evelyn Cunningham.
Links to pages:
Civil Rights Movement Veterans:
http://www.crmvet.org/info/mowjl.htm
Official Program for the March on Washington:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=96
Asus Philip Randolph Institute:
http://www.apri.org//ht/d/sp/i/225/pid/225
http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963mow
Martin luther king Jr speech:
http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
Civil rights act 1964:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=97&page=transcript
Voting right act 1965:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=100&page=transcript
