Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense, 1941
Primary Document by A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington. © UPI, Bettmann, University of Maryland Labor in America Collection
The groundwork for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 was laid 22 years earlier with A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, issuing a call to African Americans to fight the unjust conditions in the workforce with a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In May 1941, with the United States on the verge of entering World War II, Randolph and other activists founded the March on Washington Movement.
Racial discrimination plagued hiring practices and left African Americans out of federal contracts. Randolph sought to initiate an end to such practices and to secure equal integration in the workforce as well as employment for African Americans in national defense.
The threatened mass protest forced President Franklin Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, banning discrimination in the federal government and the defense industry. On June 28, 1941, Randolph postponed the march.
Mass meeting flyer. © A. Philip Randolph Institute, University of Maryland Labor in America Collection
We call upon you to fight for jobs in National Defense. We call upon you to struggle for the integration of Negroes in the armed forces, such as the Air Corps, Navy, Army, and Marine Corps of the Nation.
We call upon you to demonstrate for the abolition of Jim-Crowism in all Government departments and defense employment.
This is an hour of crisis. It is a crisis of democracy. It is a crisis of minority groups. It is a crisis of Negro Americans.
What is this crisis?
To American Negroes, it is the denial of jobs in Government defense projects. It is racial discrimination in Government departments. It is widespread Jim-Crowism in the armed forces of the Nation.
While billions of the taxpayers’ money are being spent for war weapons, Negro workers are being turned away from the gates of factories, mines, and mills being flatly told, “NOTHING DOING.” Some employers refuse to give Negroes jobs when they are without “union cards,” and some unions refuse Negro workers union cards when they are “without jobs.”
What shall we do?
What a dilemma!
What a runaround!
What a disgrace!
What a blow below the belt!
Though dark, doubtful, and discouraging, all is not lost, all is not hopeless. Though battered and bruised, we are not beaten, broken, or bewildered.
Verily, the Negroes’ deepest disappointments and direst defeats, their tragic trials and outrageous oppressions in these dreadful days of destruction and disaster to democracy and freedom, and the rights of minority peoples, and the dignity and independence of the human spirit, is the Negroes’ greatest opportunity to rise to the highest heights of struggle for freedom and justice in Government, in industry, in labor unions, education, social service, religion, and culture.
With faith and confidence of the Negro people in their own power for self-liberation, Negroes can break down the barriers of discrimination against employment in National Defense. Negroes can kill the deadly serpent of race hatred in the Army, Navy, Air, and Marine Corps, and smash through and blast the Government, business, and labor-union red tape to win the right to equal opportunity in vocational training and re-training in defense employment.
Most important and vital to all, Negroes, by the mobilization and co-ordination of their mass power, can cause PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TO ISSUE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER ABOLISHING DISCRIMINATIONS IN ALL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS, ARMY, NAVY, AIR CORPS, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE JOBS.
Of course, the task is not easy. In very truth, it is big, tremendous, and difficult.
It will cost money.
It will require sacrifice.
It will tax the Negroes’ courage, determination, and will to struggle. But we can, must, and will triumph.
The Negroes’ stake in national defense is big. It consists of jobs, thousands of jobs. It may represent millions, yes hundreds of millions of dollars in wages. It consists of new industrial opportunities and hope. This is worth fighting for.
But to win our stakes, it will require an “all-out,” bold, and total effort and demonstration of colossal proportions.
Negroes can build a mammoth machine of mass action with a terrific and tremendous driving and striking power that can shatter and crush the evil fortress of race prejudice and hate, if they will only resolve to do so and never stop, until victory comes.
Dear fellow Negro Americans, be not dismayed in these terrible times. You possess power, great power. Our problem is to harness and hitch it up for action on the broadest, daring, and most gigantic scale.
In this period of power politics, nothing counts but pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure, through the tactic and strategy of broad, organized, aggressive mass action behind the vital and important issues of the Negro. To this end, we propose that 10,000 Negroes MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS IN NATIONAL DEFENSE AND EQUAL INTEGRATION IN THE FIGHTING FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES.
An “all-out” thundering march on Washington, ending in a monster and huge demonstration at Lincoln’s Monument, will shake up white America.
It will shake up official Washington.
It will give encouragement to our white friends to fight all the harder by our side, with us, for our righteous cause.
It will gain respect for the Negro people.
It will create a new sense of self-respect among Negroes.
But what of national unity?
We believe in national unity, which recognizes equal opportunity of black and white citizens to jobs in national defense and the armed forces, and in all other institutions and endeavors in America. We condemn all dictatorships, Fascist, Nazi, and Communist. We are loyal, patriotic Americans, all.
But, if American democracy will not defend its defenders; if American democracy will not protect its protectors; if American democracy will not give jobs to its toilers because of race or color; if American democracy will not insure equality of opportunity, freedom, and justice to its citizens, black and white, it is a hollow mockery and belies the principles for which it is supposed to stand.
To the hard, difficult, and trying problem of securing equal participation in national defense, we summon all Negro Americans to march on Washington. We summon Negro Americans to form committees in various cities to recruit and register marchers and raise funds through the sale of buttons and other legitimate means for the expenses of marchers to Washington by busses, trains, private automobiles, trucks, and on foot.
We summon Negro Americans to stage marches on their City Halls and Councils in their respective cities and urge them to memorialize the President to issue an executive order to abolish discrimination in the Government and national defense.
However, we sternly counsel against violence and ill-considered and intemperate action and the abuse of power. Mass power, like physical power, when misdirected, is more harmful than helpful.
We summon you to mass action that is orderly and lawful, but aggressive and militant, for justice, equality, and freedom.
Crispus Attucks marched and died as a martyr for American independence. Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass fought, bled, and died for the emancipation of Negro slaves and the preservation of American democracy.
Abraham Lincoln, in times of the grave emergency of the Civil War, issued the Proclamation of Emancipation for the freedom of Negro slaves and the preservation of American democracy.
Today, we call upon President Roosevelt, a great humanitarian and idealist, to follow in the footsteps of his noble and illustrious predecessor and take the second decisive step in this world and national emergency and free American Negro citizens of the stigma, humiliation, and insult of discrimination and Jim-Crowism in Government departments and national defense.
The Federal Government cannot with clear conscience call upon private industry and labor unions to abolish discrimination based upon race and color as long as it practices discrimination itself against Negro Americans.
NEGROES’ COMMITTEE TO MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR EQUAL PARTICIPATION IN NATIONAL DEFENSE.
2289 7th Avenue, New York City Edgecombe 4-4340
Walter White
Richard Parrish
Rev. William Lloyd Imes
Dr. Rayford Logan
Lester B. Granger
Henry K. Craft
Frank R. Crosswaith
A. Philip Randolph
Layle Lane
The Black Worker, May 1941
© 1941 A. Philip Randolph Institute. Reprinted with permission from Reporting Civil Rights Vol. 1 (LOA #137): American Journalism 1941-1963 (New York: Library of America, 2003).