Reframing Randolph. Andrew E. Kersten
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has become more complicated.
Eric Arnesen’s chapter refocuses our attention on Randolph the young socialist radical struggling to make a name for himself in New York City and shape the politics of the Progressive Era. Digging deeply into Randolph’s formative years in Florida and his encounters with socialism, Arnesen argues that Randolph’s political stance was a mix of socialist beliefs (often idiosyncratic ones) and African American protest traditions. Randolph’s radicalism was also not terribly original or firmly set. Nonetheless, his politics opened a world of activism and possibility. It was an avenue for his impulses to right wrongs and to change the world for the better. Joining forces with other young radicals like Chandler Owen, he was able to catapult himself into a circle of black and white radicals in New York City, which for a time not only put him in close contact with such people as Eugene V. Debs and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, but also gave him the opportunity to express himself formally with the publication of the groundbreaking magazine, the Messenger, once labeled by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer as the most dangerous African American periodical of the age. Randolph’s radicalism was resilient, perhaps through its malleability. He was able to remain a Socialist despite the internecine fights over World War I and among black Socialists themselves, a number of whom joined a newly consolidated Communist Party. He also stuck with the Socialist Party despite its mediocre record on the issue of race relations. Yet, by the late 1920s, as radicalism faded from the political scene, Randolph turned his attention to other matters, including building a new union. Nonetheless, the lyrical days of Randolph’s youth provided him with the intellectual and rhetorical skills to fight the Pullman Company and challenge several U.S. presidents and a nation to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. They also provided him with a political outlook based not on convenience but rather conviction.
In her contribution, Cynthia Taylor explores an often overlooked and dismissed aspect of Randolph’s personal and philosophical convictions: Christianity. Randolph grew up in a household and community dominated by African American religious traditions, especially those of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His parents were people of deep faith, and Taylor maintains that so, too, was their second son, who, like their first, bore a biblical name. There was a time after his move to New York City when Randolph professed to be an atheist. After his radical years, however, Randolph returned to his previously held beliefs, though the charge of atheism—often used by his critics—stuck. Thus, Taylor provides a powerful corrective, illustrating not only Randolph’s religious beliefs but also how he integrated them into his civil rights work and labor organizing. Randolph’s knowledge of, and popular appeals to, African American religious traditions helped him build the BSCP and assemble the March on Washington Movement. Taylor argues that his use of Christian imagery and thoughts was neither crass nor shamelessly exploitive. Rather, she argues that akin to Martin Luther King, Jr., Randolph was an adherent of a social gospel that expanded Americans’ understanding of its ethics and imperatives by infusing it with Gandhian principles relating to direct action and nonviolence. Further, Randolph’s credentials for religious activism did not end with World War II. Indeed, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to expand relationships among civil rights activists, labor, and religious leaders alike.
In addition to political and religious allegiances, Randolph had clearly defined ideas about gender and culture. As Robert L. Hawkins argues, Randolph was quite conscious of stereotypes and conventions of manliness, and in seeking to culturally manipulate them in order to improve the social, economic, and political standing of Pullman porters, he made them instrumental in advancing the porters’ “manhood rights” and the desire for fair pay, union representation, and job opportunities. Randolph recognized that the American political economy judged most African Americans, particularly men, as indolent slackers. To change that view, Randolph emphasized how the members of the BSCP were “manly” men deserving of proper wages, benefits, and working conditions. Unlike tip-taking black street musicians singing or plucking a banjo for their next meal, the porters were not mendicants. Randolph wanted them to get living wages and eliminate the degrading habit of working for tips. Using the Messenger to shape opinions of the black community and raise the porters to middle-class respectability, he created a binary opposition between itinerant musicians, on the one hand, and “respectable” male breadwinners who worked on passenger trains, on the other. Thus gender, race, and class were at the center of Randolph’s project of framing the porters as culturally respected men who took care of their wives and children in a manner consistent with the ideal of white patriarchy. Randolph’s words resonated with the porters in the Brotherhood and their wives and families, and his tactics arguably helped build acceptance for the union and his utilization of it as a platform to help launch the modern civil rights movement.
To Randolph, socialism, manhood rights, and black Protestantism were foundational to a mass movement for justice and equality—a movement that involved his building large coalitions and umbrella organizations to execute the changes he desired. Thus, in the 1930s, taking advantage of the spirit of cooperation among various black radicals and liberals, Randolph helped to establish the National Negro Congress (NNC). At the same time, however, as Erik Gellman demonstrates in his essay, these coalitions were never as strong as Randolph needed, and so the NNC’s history provides a compelling example of the internal frictions that eventually led Randolph to pursue other strategies for civil rights reform. The advent of the New Deal, the growth of unions, and the resurgence of radical politics in America gave him a chance to unite factions of the civil rights and labor movements. Among the deep divisions were the fights between the Communists and the Socialists, who vied to capture the hearts and souls of the working-class movements of the 1930s. There were also fights between the AFL and the CIO, whose organizers had conflicting loyalties to skilled artisans and the semi-skilled and unskilled workforces of the mass-production industries. Gellman shows that Randolph, with his radical political credentials and his growing stature in the AFL, was the man of the hour to lead the NNC and unite forward-thinking unionists and political activists. Yet, the center did not hold. Randolph’s own failings as a leader, coupled with the centrifugal forces driving the split between the AFL and CIO and his longstanding feuds with Communists, spelled doom for Randolph’s participation in the NNC, which itself was weakened greatly by his departure. Randolph went on to establish his own vehicle for civil rights and still worked toward erecting big tents to shelter his allies and amass a political campaign. As Gellman concludes, Randolph’s coalition groups, such as the March on Washington Movement, were under his direct control—for better and for worse.
Aside from his intellectual commitments, his tireless organizing, and his political achievements, we at times see another Randolph in this volume—one who was less progressive, more hierarchical, and far less willing to challenge some political and social conventions of his day. Melinda Chateauvert demonstrates that although Randolph was supportive of women’s equality, his focus remained on African American men and their ability to enjoy the privileges of first-class citizenship. To Randolph, these notions translated directly to his approach to organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the March on Washington Movement. Women were instrumental: They helped to provide the funding, to organize the rallies and speaking engagements, and to perform the office work. As Chateauvert chronicles, women were there, but Randolph wanted them to aspire to the respectful secondary roles that that white women, especially those among the upper classes, enjoyed. Chateauvert frames her essay around the notions of manhood rights and dignity, and how the intersection of race and gender influenced Randolph’s choice to maintain rigid sex-based roles for men and women in his various political projects. This outcome was not merely a product of his epoch or of his generation. Rather, placing women in important roles—even though they were defined by sex—ironically reflected a commitment to their active involvement that was not shared by all civil rights and labor leaders. Even so, Randolph easily dismissed and disregarded the work of his women leaders. Nonetheless, the experiences Randolph afforded women became proving grounds for a generation of leaders such as Ella Baker, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Rosina Corrothers Tucker.
The particularities of women’s involvement in Randolph’s black protest work also figure centrally in David Lucander’s essay, which focuses on the March on Washington Movement in New York City and St. Louis, Missouri. Lucander illustrates that MOWM branches did not function merely as Randolph’s paper tiger. Rather, they were part of a grassroots political movement to