Reframing Randolph. Andrew E. Kersten
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our friendship has deepened.
Indeed, historians have labored for decades to detail and interpret Randolph’s life and career, and this scholarly work has developed in several generally overlapping trends. One genre of literature, represented in the work of scholars such as Jeffrey B. Perry (2009) and Minkah Makalani (2011), has highlighted Randolph’s activities in the Harlem radicalism of the “New Negro” period of the 1910s and 1920s. Another, characterized by Jervis Anderson (1973), Manning Marable (1980), Jack Santino (1989), Paula Pfeffer (1990), and Andrew E. Kersten (2006), has taken the form of fuller political and historical biographies of Randolph, and come to include oral testimonies of the porters he stewarded. With some exceptions, like that of Marable, most of this writing has been more sympathetic than critical. Yet another body of scholarship, typified by Herbert Garfinkel (1959), William H. Harris (1977), Keith P. Griffler (1995), Melinda Chateauvert (1998), Andrew Kersten (2000), Eric Arnesen (2001), Beth Tompkins Bates (2001), and Larry Tye (2005), has focused on the broader organizational and policy legacies of the black protest vehicles that Randolph helped to build and lead, exploring their impact on subsequent black freedom struggles. Sometimes laudatory, other times critical, these works have highlighted the inequalities of gender and the dynamics of class and race embedded in the practices and politics of the formations in which Randolph was immersed. A final historiographical trend regarding Randolph and his organizations has recently emerged, as evident in a flurry of new work by such scholars as Cynthia Taylor (2005), Clarence Lang (2009), Cornelius L. Bynum (2010), William P. Jones (2010), and Erik S. Gellman (2012), as well as in forthcoming projects by such scholars as David Lucander and Robert L. Hawkins. More thematic in their emphases, these works build on the previous bodies of literature in providing finer grained analyses of the locally oriented and community-based initiatives of Randolph’s national formations, while at the same time decentering and even castigating Randolph himself. Unlike previous historiographical waves, this new trend has explored the religious foundations of his politics and the folk culture discourses from which he drew his rhetoric.
In a parallel development, moreover, Randolph has slowly become a fixture in filmic representations of civil rights and labor movements. Archival footage of Randolph has been featured in Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, the 1982 documentary film about the porters, produced by Jack Santino, as well as in a 1987 episode of Henry Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize PBS series, recounting the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. More recently, California Newsreel has produced a full-length documentary, A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom (1996). Indeed, Randolph has even been portrayed by actor Andre Braugher in director Robert Townsend’s made-for-cable feature film about the BSCP’s early union-building campaign, 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002).
Because of the diverse and growing body of work on and about Randolph, then, the moment is ripe for both a reintroduction to him and a revision and reinterpretation of his legacies. This collection of essays brings together disparate waves of scholarship in a manner that reflects both a synthesis and critical reassessment of this once towering historical figure, while avoiding both hagiography and blanket condemnation. In gathering for the very first time many perspectives on Randolph produced by both established and emerging scholars, this volume presents the diverse ways that historians are approaching Randolph’s long and complex career in the main political, social, and cultural currents of twentieth-century African American history and twentieth-century U.S. history overall. To achieve this synthetic and critical reappraisal, the authors in this anthology explore Randolph’s biography in detail along with his influences on the civil rights and labor movements.
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A brief summary of his life will help introduce the subject of this volume to the reader. Randolph was born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, the second son of Elizabeth and James William Randolph. Named by his parents after the Old Testament king known for his altruism and selflessness, Asa never disappointed. He and his brother, James, had a typical upbringing in the South. Despite loving parents and a comfortable though very modest home, their lives were indelibly influenced by circumstances of birth: They were African Americans reared at a time, and in a place, that denied them citizenship and equal protection under the law. Being black gated their hopes, hemmed in their aspirations, and closed most windows of opportunity. To help propel their sons out of this misery, James and Elizabeth put great emphasis on education. Asa and James excelled at school, first at the Cookman Institute and later at the City University of New York. In New York City, Asa Philip Randolph became A. Philip Randolph, the radical activist. Inspired by his professors and the political movements and leaders of the day, Randolph joined the Socialist Party, began lecturing on street-corner soapboxes, and forged relationships that allowed him to fight for civil rights and labor rights. During this time of radical transformation and activism, he fell in love with, and later married, Lucille Campbell Green. She shared Randolph’s socialist politics, and through her earnings as a beauty parlor entrepreneur, she provided the financial as well as the emotional support that allowed her spouse to pursue the goal of a more racially, politically, and economically egalitarian society. Their union produced no children, but they would remain dedicated partners for nearly fifty years until Lucille’s death in July 1963.
The most important aspects of Randolph’s early career as an activist centered on the publication of his radical magazine, the Messenger, which he created and edited with Chandler Owen, an African-American writer and left-wing radical. In 1925, his efforts to reshape the political culture caught the eye of a young black militant, Ashley Totten, who worked on passenger cars as a porter for the Pullman Company. Life for porters was rewarding but unnecessarily difficult. In an era when higher paying jobs were simply out of the question for most African American workers despite education and “respectability,” employment with the Pullman Company was financially beneficial. In fact, working for Pullman helped many black families reach middle-class status, as well as creating revenue that elevated the economic status of thousands of African Americans. Yet the cost of working as one of George Pullman’s “boys” was that porters had to endure all sorts of prejudice and discrimination while they waited on passengers. To a man, many were known only as “George,” an appellation that denied the porters’ their personal identity and reinforced longstanding expectations of black servility and subordination to white “masters.” Although they received wages, the porters were expected to hustle for tips. Moreover, while they often performed the tasks of conductors (who were always white), they never received similar pay. Porters also resented the omnipresent company spies who harassed them with white glove tests to measure cleanliness. The company took a hard line against unionism, and any talk of organizing resulted in immediate termination. Many porters had tried for years to fight back, but Pullman officials had successfully responded through threats of termination and blacklisting. This was where Randolph came in. As an outsider who had never worked for Pullman, he was not immediately vulnerable to company retaliation. And as a freelance radical seeking a base for creating change, Randolph saw an opportunity to put into action his strong convictions about the promise of black protest, the working class, and unions to remake America.
In 1925, Randolph and a cadre of porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids (BSCP). Recruiting and retaining members of this fledgling union were no easy tasks. An aborted strike in 1928 tested the morale and tenacity of the BSCP membership, the rank and file’s faith in Randolph’s decision-making, and the nascent relationship between the union and the AFL. Company officials tried to intimidate those porters who joined the BSCP, and physical violence followed where threats and economic reprisals failed. Company officials even tried to bribe Randolph to abandon his efforts, literally offering him a blank check to betray the porters. None of these anti-union countermeasures worked. Despite several years when the Brotherhood teetered on the brink of complete ruin, Randolph and men like Totten and Milton P. Webster, who was the BSCP’s Chicago organizer, kept the faith. In 1937, their diligence paid off, and the Pullman Company signed a contract with the nation’s first all-black labor union. BSCP leaders quickly secured advances in wages and respect for their members. The price of this triumph, however, was the abandonment of the Pullman maids, who served the sleeping cars in a capacity similar to their hotel counterparts. This concession to the Pullman Company was part of an expedient maneuver by the Brotherhood’s leadership to obtain a union contract and to garner the AFL membership that was critical to the union’s survival.