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                   A. Philip Randolph

   American labor rights and practices might be an altogether different beast these days without the unionizing of the trades and other service groups. Today's labor rights movement owes its beginning to one man.  Born April 15, 1889 in Crecent City, FL to an AME Church minister, whom moved the family to Jacksonville, FL in 1891, this man was Asa Phillip Randolph.

Asa originally had aspirations of acting, and moved to New York in 1911 to follow his dream. He started taking classes at City College, eventually switching majors to politics and economics since his parents objected to his desires to act. During Randolph's years at City College he met the women he'd eventually marry, Lucille Green. Green was a teacher who opened a rather lucrative beauty salon after her first husband died. After marrying Asa, his political activities would often cause a loss of customers to Lucille's salon.

Another byproduct of Randolph's years at City College was starting the radical Harlem based magazine, 'The Messenger,' with Chandler Owen, a sociology major at Columbia University, in 1917.

Randolph's first foray into political action was his organizing of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in 1925. This was a labor union for the employees of the Pullman Company, a major employer of African Americans, at the time. This brotherhood is associated with the American Federation of Labor.

1941, Asa, Bayard Rustin, and A.J. Muste began organizing a March on Washington to protest racial segregation in the military.  This march was later cancelled when President F.D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Act. Randolph also formed the Commitee Against Jim Crow in the Military Service, which was later renamed League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience.

A. Phillip Randolph also aided Rustin and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In 1964, President Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Asa Phillip Randolph died May 16, 1979.