allies and amass a political campaign. As Gellman concludes, Randolph’s coalition groups, such as the March on Washington Movement, were under his direct control—for better and for worse.
Aside from his intellectual commitments, his tireless organizing, and his political achievements, we at times see another Randolph in this volume—one who was less progressive, more hierarchical, and far less willing to challenge some political and social conventions of his day. Melinda Chateauvert demonstrates that although Randolph was supportive of women’s equality, his focus remained on African American men and their ability to enjoy the privileges of first-class citizenship. To Randolph, these notions translated directly to his approach to organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the March on Washington Movement. Women were instrumental: They helped to provide the funding, to organize the rallies and speaking engagements, and to perform the office work. As Chateauvert chronicles, women were there, but Randolph wanted them to aspire to the respectful secondary roles that that white women, especially those among the upper classes, enjoyed. Chateauvert frames her essay around the notions of manhood rights and dignity, and how the intersection of race and gender influenced Randolph’s choice to maintain rigid sex-based roles for men and women in his various political projects. This outcome was not merely a product of his epoch or of his generation. Rather, placing women in important roles—even though they were defined by sex—ironically reflected a commitment to their active involvement that was not shared by all civil rights and labor leaders. Even so, Randolph easily dismissed and disregarded the work of his women leaders. Nonetheless, the experiences Randolph afforded women became proving grounds for a generation of leaders such as Ella Baker, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Rosina Corrothers Tucker.
The particularities of women’s involvement in Randolph’s black protest work also figure centrally in David Lucander’s essay, which focuses on the March on Washington Movement in New York City and St. Louis, Missouri. Lucander illustrates that MOWM branches did not function merely as Randolph’s paper tiger. Rather, they were part of a grassroots political movement to fight for full citizenship rights for African Americans. Although many MOWM members were disappointed by the cancelation of the planned 1941 march on Washington, they organized locally for a possible revival of the idea. And, while they thought nationally, they acted right where they were. Lucander shows that local women like Eugenie Settles and Pearl Maddox were instrumental in helping to change political and economic conditions in their respective cities. Measureable gains were the result of this activism, as public pressure compelled employers to open their factories to African American men and women and forced store owners to cater to all customers, not just those who could pass for white. Although it was short lived, the MOWM at the local level—and the women central to organizing many of its efforts—were agents for change even as they operated within the boundaries of gender norms in the 1940s.
While the MOWM dissolved in the wake of World War II, Randolph’s activities in the areas of fair employment, desegregation of the military, and racial democratization of organized labor persisted. In his chapter, William P. Jones focuses on the final major organizational vehicle Randolph created to mobilize a mass base behind his twin aspirations for civil and labor rights: the Negro American Labor Council (NALC). Launched in 1960, when Randolph was seventy-one years old, the NALC, like the BSCP and the MOWM before it, coordinated efforts to fight racism and discrimination in America generally and within the labor movement in particular. Jones argues that of the political formations Randolph created, the NALC has been the least studied by civil rights and labor historians, though it had the most direct impact on the landmark civil rights laws of the period. Like Randolph’s previous groups, the NALC had both a strong local following and a national influence, and in industrial urban centers its branches pushed for civil rights reform and greater democracy within the AFL-CIO. Fair and full employment, open housing laws and ordinances, equal access to public accommodations, equality in education, and voting rights topped the organization’s concerns—although, as Jones describes, black women activists had to publicly disrupt the NALC’s founding convention in order to have their interests included and their leadership acknowledged. From this standpoint, the NALC inspired a new generation of civil rights workers while continuing the work begun by civil rights activists at the turn of the twentieth century. Similarly, the NALC continued the battle within the house of labor. Randolph’s nemesis, AFL-CIO president George Meany, begrudgingly gave ground to his long-time union brother. As Jones illustrates, Randolph successfully positioned the NALC on a national stage in order to pressure Meany and the AFL-CIO into support for civil rights. The critical moment came in 1963 when the NALC spearheaded the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Afterwards, Meany and the AFL-CIO gave their formal support to President Kennedy’s civil rights bill. Thus, despite tensions that arose among civil rights and labor activists within the NALC, Randolph’s last civil rights organization was as successful as it was short-lived.
The fissures in the civil rights movement that were already generally evident in the early 1960s—and specifically inside organizations such as the NALC—led to cracks and collapses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Younger activists separated themselves from older ones, and while some maintained their adherence to nonviolence, others adopted strategies of armed self-help. Some sought to keep ties with the labor movement, while many appealed to black nationalist sentiments of group solidarity, independence, and sovereignty. As Jerald Podair writes, all of these issues and more were at the center of the Ocean Hill–Brownsville controversy. Randolph, for his part, had to choose between those in the civil rights movement who were advocating local control and race-centered solutions to the educational and community crises in New York City, and those who were committed to the teachers’ union. In backing the latter, Randolph set himself apart and never regained the stature he once held among black freedom activists. He was not able to make a big tent of liberals and radicals on the Left to collectively solve the problems in New York City. His goal of an interracial, interdenominational, intergenerational, and cross-political movement was as unrealized in the 1960s and 1970s as it had been in the 1930s and 1940s. Podair concludes that Randolph’s vision of a combined civil rights and labor rights movement no longer had much meaning in the final half of the twentieth century. His opponents in this conflict, who under other circumstances could have been his allies, favored black community empowerment over interracialism. To state it simply, Podair maintains that African American grassroots activists chose race over class, if by “class” one means support for the teachers’ union. Yet, as Podair’s narrative indicates, given the predominantly white ethnic character of the union, the teachers to a large extent chose “identity politics” as well. Ultimately, the controversy—and Randolph’s role within it—powerfully demonstrated the vexing situations that could occur when race and class collided as well as intersected.
Taken together, these essays demonstrate that Randolph and the organizations he developed and led remain consistent and compelling subjects of historical inquiry. From a historiographical standpoint, discussing Randolph is relevant to several current scholarly conversations. Randolph’s life and work fit well within the debate about race and class in the radical movements of the twentieth century. What was Randolph’s view of the importance of class in American society? Did those concerns outweigh considerations of race? What were the advantages and realities of Randolph’s efforts as he tried to deal with both the marginalization of black workers because they were black, and the exploitation of working-class laborers because they were at the bottom of the political economy? Further, in the realm of labor and working-class history, Randolph and the Pullman porters union stand as potent emblems of independent black worker self-organization within the house of labor. A counterhegemonic element within the AFL, the BSCP was also a model of working-class agency and institution building in the black communal spaces beyond the point of production. Here, the union formed a vital touchstone for a national African American public sphere and the nucleus of a succession of black freedom organizations, including the National Negro Congress, the March on Washington Movement, and the Negro American Labor Council. At the same time, with the BSCP leadership’s focus on male breadwinner wages, and the eventual exclusion of maids from its membership, the union and its president serve as a troubling example of the discrimination against black working-class women on the basis of gender as well as race and class. To our eyes, Randolph’s record was mixed, but he was clearly conscious of the
