Philip Randolph Character Analysis

Philip Randolph was a prominent Black civil rights leader in the early 1900s. Randolph grew up in the midst of debasing racism but transcended it through his moral conduct and dignity. He worked to organize scattered groups of people into unions that could enact change. His main goal was to bring as many people as possible into consensus with one another. He did this by limiting his own personal opinions, aware that the power of his position as a civil rights leader could potentially corrupt him. He put his own freedom on the line by organizing ex-slaves into workers’ unions during a time when union activity was cause for arrest. Randolph was uncompromising. When Franklin Roosevelt called him into the White House to negotiate with him to call off his planned civil rights march on Washington, Randolph refused to back down until Roosevelt passed a bill mandating that Blacks be hired in the workplace. After the war, he worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin to fight broadly against racial injustice. He was what Brooks calls a biblical realist who believed that aggressive tactics were necessary to restrain people’s sinful and self-justifying behavior. However, he also advocated for non-violent protest, believing that through non-violence, protestors provoke the unjust to blatantly expose their villainy for all to see. The idea was also to keep himself from becoming corrupt in the process of fighting against corruption.