James Lee Dickey: An Analysis of One African-American's Leadership in Jim Crow Texas

A. Phillip Randolph

The New Deal inadvertently brought another black leader to the forefront. Voluntary segregation extended to the workplace in some situations. The most successful black union in the United States was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters headed by A. Philip Randolph. After a few missteps in the 1920’s, the union’s solidarity defeated its opponent, the Pullman Railcar Union in 1935, thus winning access to the New’ Deal’s Railway Labor Act. Porters received a substantial wage increase and substantially improved work schedule. Though the union represented only a small percentage of African Americans, its persistence pushed A. Philip Randolph into the national spotlight as a black leader. Though the goal was the reinstitution of civil rights for African Americans, the BSCP’s success was due to black solidarity rather than integration with whites. Once again, the NAACP’s goal of equality took a back seat to racial uplift.
A. Philip Randolph success made him the obvious choice as president of the Communist-backed National Negro Congress (NNC). Randolph’s primary focus in pre-WWII America was for African Americans to share the explosion boom at munitions factories. More than half the factories awarded government contracts in the early 40s declared they would hire whites only. Those that did hire blacks bypassed them for skilled jobs thereby relegated black workers to mop and broom work. Even worse, as the economy rebounded from the Great Depression, New Deal Programs that had benefited African Americans were drawing to a close.
 

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