Peaceable assembly is the cornerstone
to the ongoing fight for equal rights.
And in America, we look towards the Civil Rights Movement
of the 1950s and '60s as our primary model.
"It all started when Mrs. Rosa Parks
wouldn't give up her seat on the bus to a white man."
"This is rehearsal,
man getting to know their machines."
But at the dawn of World War II,
over twenty years before the famous march on Washington,
a hundred thousand Black activists came within ten days
of marching on the Capitol,
forcing a crucial early inflection point
in the fight for civil rights.
"The march at Washington in 1941 was a precursor
to the more famous march in 1963.
And although the one in 1941 did not actually happen
it was successful in achieving its objective."
So how do you quickly mobilize
a hundred thousand Americans in a time
long before social media or even television?
This is the story of the March that Almost Happened,
and the man behind it.
Though the Civil Rights Act of 1875
technically guaranteed equal rights,
lax enforcement, various Supreme Court Rulings,
intimidation, segregation, and violence
systematically ensured that people of color
remained left out of the American Dream.
It would take almost another century
to put an end to segregation and begin the long process
of equal rights.
But icons who led the Civil Rights Movement,
like Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King,
didn't exist in a vacuum.
There are a lot of players who didn't wind up
becoming household names.
"Although the Civil Rights Movement that
we're most familiar with begins in 1955
with the Montgomery Bus boycott,
it had roots at a much earlier period.
In many ways the strategies, and the tactics,
and some of the people involved were the same."
Enter A. Philip Randolph.
"We want complete equality.
Social, economic, and political.
And no force under the sun, can stand, and block,
and stop this Civil Rights Revolution."
"Although Randolph is probably less well known
to most people today, he was at the time,
one of the most prominent
and respected leaders in the Black Movement.
"Roy Wilkins with A. Philip Randolph,
they have fought their fight all of their adult lives."
Born in 1889, Randolph was raised in Florida,
migrating up to New York City as a young adult
to study Economics and Philosophy.
"He was drawn to the, to socialism,
and to the Socialist Party.
He started a newspaper called The Messenger.
It was a very much working class oriented publication."
The Messenger advocated for Black unions
resisted the draft in World War I,
and pushed for integration and equality across the board.
As a major promoter of Black artists,
The Messenger is also credited for helping
launch an explosion of music, art and literature
that began in the 1920s,
known today as the Harlem Renaissance.
Randolph's high profile from The Messenger,
plus his reputation as a Union organizer,
caught the attention of 500 overworked,
underpaid railroad workers.
In 1925, a secret meeting in Harlem,
established the first all Black union:
The Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters.
"The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
is a union of railway porters,
but its roots go back to the end of the Civil War.
A man named George Pullman, organized a company
to provide sleeper cars for railway travel.
It's sort of similar to
First Class travel today on airlines.
Except in this case, of course,
he drew on a Black labor force exclusively,
who would serve people food, clean up after them,
make their bed.
They weren't even accorded the dignity
of having their own names.
They were all called George."
Despite the demeaning nature of the work,
this job offered one of the only
upwardly mobile opportunities for Black Americans
who migrated to the north hoping the escape
the Jim Crow south.
"It was an occupation of some respectability.
I mean it was after all, in this period,
when most Black laborers were on plantations and farms,
and so they were looked up to."
While White travelers let these porters
shine their shoes, make their beds, and serve them food,
the Brotherhood quietly, and methodically organized,
using the motto, "Fight or be Slaves",
Randolph led an expansion of the union to over 18 thousand
members nationwide.
And ironically, a key to the Brotherhood's success
was the very system the relegated them
to their servile cast:
the railroad.
"The very nature of the work enabled them to develop
strong connections among themselves,
pride and a militancy that won them
considerable approval in the Black community as a whole.
A porter that gets on a train in New York,
and he travels to Atlanta, and maybe down to Florida,
or Louisiana up to Chicago, or to California,
and in the process they're making connections
among communities that otherwise might be isolated.
Black newspapers, like the Chicago Defender
would use porters to distribute their papers.
They'd become the instrument of communication,
nationwide people would get information
about what was going on in Chicago, in Mississippi,
and vice versa.
And the porters were instrumental in creating
that sense of community and of connection."
This was their social network,
the powerful potential of which Randolph cultivated
to push for better working conditions and higher pay.
But up to this point, Randolph had not yet been able
to leverage this power beyond union organizing
and collective bargaining.
But that would all change after Pearl Harbor.
"December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy."
As FDR's war mobilization
began to lift the nation out of the Great Depression,
African Americans were left out of the boom.
"Black Americans were excluded, by and large,
from fairly lucrative jobs in many cases,
in these defense industries.
And Randolph, as a union leader, raised a protest
to the government that if they did not deal
with this problem, that is the racial discrimination
against Black workers,
that he would bring a march on Washington."
And as it turns out,
Randolph had a supporter in the White House,
the First Lady, who took a greater interest
in Civil Rights issues than her husband.
In his 1941 correspondence with Eleanor Roosevelt,
Randolph put the White House on notice
of his plans to organize a march on Washington
to advocate for the right to work.
But President Roosevelt's priority was to mobilize
the war effort as quickly and smoothly as possible.
He rejected Randolph's demands outright.
Undeterred, Randolph continued to plan the march
and word spread through the Brotherhood's massive network.
With less than two weeks before the march,
the First Lady helped arrange a meeting between
Randolph and President Roosevelt in the Oval Office.
It was not just him, it was also Walter White,
who was the head of the NAACP,
and Mary McLeod Bethune who was a major leader
among Black women's organizations.
And Roosevelt seemed to want to avoid
actually addressing the demands that Randolph had made.
Randolph at some point interrupts him and says,
you know, if we don't get some kind of satisfaction
on our demands, we will bring a hundred thousand
Black protestors to Washington D.C.
And Roosevelt's head snapped back, and he was incredulous,
he turned to Walter White and asked him,
Well, can he do that?
Which White answers, Yep, he can do that.
And the reason he could do it was because of
the Sleeping Car Porters."
President Roosevelt grudgingly signed
an executive order 8802, ensuring fair hiring practices
to Black Americans and establishing the
Fair Employment Practices Commission,
which was empowered to investigate,
and overturn race discrimination in industries
engaged in military production.
This was a major early victory
for the Civil Rights Movement.
Made possible by A. Philip Randolph's ability
to quickly mobilize Black Americans
in a time where the closest thing we had
to mass communication was FDR's Fireside Chats.
"Nobody knows when total victory would come."
But Randolph did have to make some
concessions, whose original demands included
the desegregation of the armed forces.
For Roosevelt, that was a bridge too far,
who feared alienating military brass just before the war
and going head to head with southern democrats in Congress.
Randolph continued his fight after the war,
organizing protests outside
the Democratic National Convention in 1948.
And shortly after Truman won the election,
he signed executive order 9981,
desegregating the armed forces.
"We look at the March in Washington in 41
that didn't happen,
the movement continued.
You know, that you don't win it in a single battle,
it is a long drawn out struggle."
Two decades later, A. Philip Randolph
would finally get his march on Washington.
Playing the lead role in organizing the largest
Civil Rights Demonstration in American History.
"Today the city of Washington takes notice.
Our leaders, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Reverend King
receive the keys to the city."
Then the following year, this happened.
"I'm about to sign into law, the Civil Rights Act of 1964"
"It's fair to say that
without the march that would have been
unlikely that there would have been much progress
passing that legislation."
A. Philip Randolph's fingerprint
on the Civil Rights Movement remains indelible.
His persistence, strategies, and tactics are timeless.
And are studied by anyone hoping to organize
for change today.
"Peaceful protests! Peaceful protests!"