Randolph, A. Philip 1889-1979

RANDOLPH, A. PHILIP 1889-1979

Editor, labor leader

Most Dangerous

In the latter half of the 1910s, when any dissent against American government policy could be punished by a long prison term, A. Philip Randolph was one of the nation's most vociferous dissidents, criticizing American policy in World War I and American capitalism as a whole. A radical activist, Randolph was editor of the Messenger, which issued its first monthly volume in November 1917. Randolph and his partner, Chandler Owen, were among a group known as the New Negroes, who were strong voices against American racism throughout the decade, particularly during the war years. By 1919 Randolph and Owen, nicknamed "Lenin and Trotsky" around Harlem, were referred to as "the most dangerous Negroes in the United States," and the Messenger was called by the U.S. Department of Justice "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications."

Background

Asa Philip Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, in 1889, and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister with a small congregation. Asa and his older brother, James, were raised in the church; later they would disavow its teachings even while recognizing the necessary social functions of black churches. The brothers, two years apart in age, entered the Cookman Institute in 1903. The school had been built by Methodist missionaries in 1872, becoming the first high school for African Americans in Florida. Its teachers were northern white missionaries and southern blacks. The Randolph brothers performed well in school, and Asa was the valedictorian at graduation in 1907. He was a fine singer and actor, and the idea of becoming a professional performer led him to New York. In 1911, after four years of working jobs such as delivery driver, sales clerk, and laborer on the railroad, Randolph moved to Harlem.

Harlem

There was no better place in America for an eager, intelligent, twenty-two-year-old black man in 1911. Black Harlem had been expanding for years as the first great wave of southern black migration began to flow north. Throughout the decade Harlem was the nation's capital of black intellectual life, in the early years of what would later be called the Harlem Renaissance. Randolph immediately began seeking company and conversation, while pursuing a theater career. In 1912 he was offered an acting job, but refused the job after his parents wrote of their displeasure. Instead of the stage, Randolph found politics. In February 1912 he began attending City College of New York, and formed a circle of radical friends as he studied history, philosophy, and economics. He founded the Independent Political Council in 1913, a current-affairs group, and worked on the campaign of Socialist John M. Royal, who was a candidate for the city council. Randolph also came under the influence of street orator and pioneer Harlem radical Hubert Harrison.

Radical

Randolph met Ernest T. Welcome in 1914 and began working for Welcome's Brotherhood of Labor, an organization that brought workers from the South and helped them find jobs in New York. He also met and married Lucille Campbell that year. She was crucial to his development as a radical, supporting him economically as he pursued his political activism. In early 1915 Randolph met Owen, a Columbia student and fellow radical. The two worked closely for years, becoming dominant voices in the New Negro movement. Through 1915 and 1916 Randolph and Owen followed and participated in Harlem radical politics. They became well-known soapbox orators at Harlem's notoriously radical speakers' corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. Eventually, they quit college and reorganized Randolph's IPC, issuing a platform that would "combine and distribute literature;…conduct public lectures on vital issues affecting colored people's economic and political destiny;…examine, expose and condemn cunning and malicious political marplots." Their first opportunity to do these things in print came in January 1917 when William White, president of the Headwaiters and Sidewaiters Society, asked them to write and edit Hotel Messenger, his union's newsletter. Randolph and Owen produced the magazine for eight months, until they angered White by exposing an internal union scandal. The Hotel Messenger ceased publication, but Randolph and Owen continued their work.

The Messenger.

The two young radicals were busy in 1917. They organized the United Brotherhood of Elevator and Switchboard Operators, and worked on the mayoral campaign of Socialist Party candidate Morris Hillquit. Their crowning achievement in 1917 was the first issue of the Messenger. Funded largely by Lucille Randolph, the Messenger quickly became what Randolph referred to as "the first voice of radical, revolutionary, economic and political action among Negroes in America." The first issue appeared in November 1917. At the time, America had been in the war for seven months, and Russia's October Revolution had just taken place. "Our aim," Randolph wrote in the first number, "is to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times, and above the cheap peanut politics of old reactionary Negro leaders. Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has." The journal was quickly singled out as one of the finest of the era, with its regular contributors named "Messenger" radicals. The group included Robert Bagnall, William Pickens, William Colson, Wallace Thurman, Theophilus Lewis, and George Frazier Miller; by the early 1920s the journal was publishing Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen. The Messenger addressed socialism, labor unions, violence against African Americans, and racism; and it vehemently protested the war raging in Europe. It celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution and the Industrial Workers of the World, and was bitingly critical of the elite black leadership in America, especially after W. E. B. Du Bois supported the war effort in the pages of the NAACPs Crisis, Until lack of funds forced its closure in 1925, the Messenger was perhaps the strongest voice in defending the rights of African Americans as laborers as well as citizens.

The War and Beyond

Opposition to World War I—at a time when any dissent was fraught with serious risk—was perhaps the strongest message of the Messenger. On 4 August 1918 Randolph and Owen were arrested in Cleveland at an antiwar rally. The judge in the case, thinking that Owen and Randolph were too young to have produced the Messenger alone, dismissed the case with a warning, but the Messenger was banned from the mails. Randolph continued his attacks on the war effort, and especially on Du Bois. Many blacks thought that their participation in the war would earn them respect at home. Randolph argued otherwise, and was proved correct during the summer following the war's end, known as the "Red Summer" because of the outbreak of race riots around the country. Hundreds of blacks died in these riots, and the Messenger began advocating "violent defense of rights and life." As the decade closed, Randolph was just beginning to be heard. In the following decades he became a major labor organizer and major advocate for the rights of American blacks, especially through the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, organized in 1925, and his unionization of the Pullman Company in 1937. The radical voice of the 1910s eventually consulted Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson, and helped lead the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Randolph died in 1979.

Source:

Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).