Civil Rights and Labor Leader A. Philip Randolph Was a Brother of Phi Beta Sigma

Did you know that one of the most important labor and civil rights leaders in American history was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.? His name was A. Philip Randolph, and he spent his life organizing Black workers and pushing the nation toward justice.

Asa Philip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, and grew up in Jacksonville, where he attended the Cookman Institute, one of the early historically Black schools in the state. He later moved to New York City, settling in Harlem. According to Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., Randolph was a brother of the fraternity through its Iota Sigma Chapter.

Randolph changed the course of American labor history. In 1925 he founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful Black-led labor union, and after a long struggle he secured its first major contract with the Pullman Company in 1937, winning dignity and better pay for thousands of Black workers.

His organizing power soon reshaped the nation. In 1941, Randolph threatened to lead a massive march on Washington to protest discrimination in the defense industry. To avoid it, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning racial discrimination in the nation’s war industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Randolph later pressed President Harry Truman to desegregate the United States armed forces.

More than two decades later, Randolph realized his vision of a march. As the elder statesman of the movement, he was a chief architect and the head of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the demonstration where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Randolph the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A. Philip Randolph died on May 16, 1979, in New York City. From the Cookman Institute to the front of the March on Washington, Phi Beta Sigma’s A. Philip Randolph dedicated his life to the freedom and dignity of Black workers and all Black Americans.