On the March
In the relationship between Randolph and Roosevelt, there emerged a new dynamic in American political life: persistent, face-to-face African-American lobbying for White House concessions on matters of importance to the African-American community. That pattern has continued to this day.
The National Negro Congress
In 1936, delegates from over 500 different African-American groups gathered in Chicago and formed the National Negro Congress, an umbrella group that would yield considerable political clout in the years to come. The group selected Asa Phillip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, as its first president.
Having successfully made the transition from “black labor leader” to “black leader,” the energetic Randolph soon proved was not shy about making life difficult for white politicians. He was, in particular, a thorn in the side of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose level of political commitment to the civil rights movement at that time could perhaps be described as “all talk unless absolutely forced to take action.”
Randolph's determination—and, in particular, his obvious willingness to call a 100,000-person July 4 march on Washington that would have embarrassed the Roosevelt White House—led to a concession: an executive order forbidding racial discrimination in government projects and defense industries. The march was called off. A later president, John F. Kennedy, would attempt, without success, to get African-American leaders to call off the 1963 March on Washington; when they refused, he made the best of the situation by insisting that he was in agreement with its aims.
The (Other) Bus Boycott
Long before the 1954 boycott of buses in Montgomery, Alabama, made national headlines, African-Americans in New York City won concessions from a city transit system committed to racist practices. The year was 1941, and the issue was whether New York's bus companies would employ African-American drivers and mechanics. African-Americans stayed off city buses for four weeks, at which point the bus companies agreed to change their hiring practices.
CORE Is Born
In 1942, James Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality, better known as CORE. The group was devoted to nonviolent campaigns of “direct action” against racially discriminatory practices in public places, housing, and other settings. Although the group would win national attention in the early 1960s for its courageous Freedom Rides through the segregated south, its early campaigns were in the north. A 1942 sit-in, for instance, took place at the segregated Stoner's Restaurant in Chicago.
