Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph

At
one time, Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was a household name. As president of
the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), he was an embodiment
of America’s multifaceted radical tradition, a leading spokesman for Black
America, and a potent symbol of trade unionism and civil rights agitation for
nearly half a century. But with the dissolution of the BSCP in the 1970s, the
assaults waged against organized labor in the 1980s, and the overall silencing
of labor history in U.S. popul...