A. Philip Randolph in Civil Rights Movement: Desegregation
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) was the leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union who in 1941, proposed a March on Washington to protest racial discrimination in the expanding war industries and the military.
In 1941, Randolph planned to organize some 100,000 African Americans to march in Washington, D.C. "for jobs in national defense and equal integration in the fighting forces."
Ultimately, he cancelled the march when President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to end discrimination in war employment. Randolph would finally see his original plan in action in 1963 when he and several other prominent Black leaders rallied some 250,000 people in a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.