A. Phillip Randolph - Black History Month - February - Whittemore Library at Framingham State University

America's Groundbreaking Labor Leader

THE Black civil rights leader of the first half of the 20th century, and arguably the most influential Black leader in all of American history. He started organizing African American workers young (at 25), learned the rough rules of the game (got fired that first time), then kept right on going (mentored Rustin and King, Jr. among others) and never stopped.

"Randolph was both a great labor leader and a great civil rights leader, not coincidental when you consider racial justice means nothing without economic justice. At least that’s what Randolph – and his protégé Martin Luther King, Jr., thought. The 1963 March on Washington was, after all, the March for Jobs and Freedom."

- Back Bay Archives. (n.d.). New England Historical Society. Retrieved January 22, 2025, from https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/tag/back-bay/

A. Philip Randolph Heads the 1963 March on Washington
From the New England Historical Society. Site has ads.
Randolph, A. Philip
From Stanford's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.
Hall of Honor Inductee: A. Philip Randolph
From the U.S. Department of Labor. The Hall of Honor was established in 1988 to honor those Americans whose distinctive contributions in the field of labor have elevated working conditions, wages, and overall quality of life of America's working families.

A. Philip Randolph is taking none of your (or anybody else's) sh*t...

A. Philip Randolph
From the AFL-CIO website.
A. Philip Randolph Institute
To A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, (APRl's co-founders), the fight for workers' rights and civil rights were inseparable. They founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute in 1965 to continue the struggle for social, political and economic justice for all working Americans.