African Americans -- History; Slavery -- United States -- History
Randolph went on to envision an organization with a challenging action
program. Millions of supporters would be divided into a network of small
block units. Each would be headed by a block captain. This would
facilitate instant, mass mobilization. At a moment's notice, a chain of
command could be activated, and millions of marchers would be in the
streets. Randolph also envisioned repeated, gigantic marches aimed at
Washington and state capitals. He could also see smaller, regular marches
on the city halls and other establishments in dozens of cities across the
country. To him it was desirable for blacks to picket the White House, if
need be, until the nation came to see that blacks were willing to
sacrifice everything to be counted as men. Randolph also wanted to
encourage the mobilization of registration and voting.
Besides being reminiscent of the Gandhi nonviolent campaign in India,
Randolph's March on Washington Movement, although it never materialized,
foreshadowed the civil rights movement of the late fifties and sixties.
This later civil rights movement, however, was directed by several
separate organizations which, at times, were involved in power fights
with one another. It lacked the central organization and national,
instant mobilization which Randolph had in mind. It also included a
substantial number of white supporters and leaders which Randolph had
excluded from his program. He had predicted that this kind of white
participation would back down in times of crisis and thereby emasculate
the movement. This is precisely what the Black Power advocates of the
late sixties claimed had happened to the civil rights movement, and they
gave the same reasons for its collapse.
In 1947, Randolph cooperated with Grant Reynolds in organizing the League
for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation; its aim
was to encourage draft resisters objecting to serving in a segregated
army. Randolph was also one of a delegation which told President Truman
that America could not afford to fight colored people in Asia with the
army as it then existed. Truman, then, took the first real steps in
ending military segregation. In 1963, Randolph and Bayard Rustin did
organize a massive march on Washington. Most of the publicity, however,
went to Martin Luther King, Jr., its main speaker. This march
contributed significantly to the passage of civil rights legislation.
However, most of Randolph's efforts continued to be in the realm of union
organization. In 1957, he was made a vice president in the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
and a member of its executive council. Two years later, he was censured
for charging organized labor with racism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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