REFRAMING RANDOLPH
CULTURE, LABOR, HISTORY SERIES
General Editors: Daniel Bender and Kimberley L. Phillips
The Forests Gave Way before Them: The Impact of African Workers on the Anglo-American World, 1650–1850
Frederick C. Knight
Unknown Class: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present
Mark Pittenger
Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915–1940
Michael D. Innis-Jiménez
Ordering Coal: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in the Gilded Age, 1870–1900
Andrew B. Arnold
A Great Conspiracy against Our Race: Italian Immigrant Newspapers and the Construction of Whiteness in the Early Twentieth Century
Peter G. Vellon
Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph
Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
Reframing Randolph
Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph
Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
© 2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
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ISBN: 978-0-8147-8594-2 (hardback)
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This book is dedicated to my daughters, Bethany and Emily, and to my wife, Vickie.
—Andrew E. Kersten, Moscow, Idaho
For Clarence Earl Lang, Sr. (1949–2013), who, seated behind the wheel of a Chicago Transit Authority bus, was a beneficiary of Randolph’s many legacies.
—Clarence Lang, Lawrence, Kansas
CONTENTS
Arlene Holt Baker
1 A Reintroduction to Asa Philip Randolph
Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang
2 Researching Randolph: Shifting Historiographic Perspectives
Joe William Trotter, Jr.
3 A. Philip Randolph: Emerging Socialist Radical
Eric Arnesen
4 Keeping His Faith: A. Philip Randolph’s Working-Class Religion
Cynthia Taylor
5 Brotherhood Men and Singing Slackers: A. Philip Randolph’s Rhetoric of Music and Manhood
Robert Hawkins
6 “The Spirit and Strategy of the United Front”: Randolph and the National Negro Congress, 1936–1940
Erik S. Gellman
7 Organizing Gender: A. Philip Randolph and Women Activists
Melinda Chateauvert
8 Beyond A. Philip Randolph: Grassroots Protest and the March on Washington Movement
David Lucander
William P. Jones
10 No Exit: A. Philip Randolph and the Ocean Hill–Brownsville Crisis
Jerald Podair
FOREWORD
