Asa Philip Randolph[1] (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist political parties.

He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a voice that would not be silenced. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against unfair labor practices in relation to people of color eventually led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully pressured President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed services.

In 1963, Randolph was the head of the March on Washington, which was organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech. Randolph inspired the Freedom Budget, sometimes called the Randolph Freedom budget, which aimed to deal with the economic problems facing the black community, it was published by the Randolph Institute in January 1967 as A Freedom Budget for All Americans.[2]

Randolph was born April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida,[3] the second son of the Rev. James William Randolph, a tailor and minister [3] in an African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which had a thriving, well-established African-American community.[4]

From his father, Randolph learned that color was less important than a persons character and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of education and of defending oneself physically against those who would seek to hurt one or ones family, if necessary. Randolph remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his father tucked a