Participate
A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and the March on Washington
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The Black freedom struggle and the fight for economic justice were connected long before the southern civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. One of the most influential champions of both workers' rights and African American civil rights during the first half of the twentieth century was A. Philip Randolph. Bayard Rustin discusses Randolph's vision for the civil rights movement in his interview for America, They Loved You Madly, the predecessor to Eyes I.
A. Philip Randolph was a civil rights leader, labor activist, and socialist politician. In 1925, Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first majority African American labor union. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., Randolph believed that after Black voting rights were secured and segregation in the South was abolished, a new front in the freedom struggle would present itself: the fight for economic equality. "Mr. Randolph understood something that very few people did," Rustin says in his interview. "He foresaw that a new period was coming and that that new period had to do with economics."
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In 1941 Randolph, Rustin, and A.J. Muste planned a march on Washington, DC, to protest racial discrimination in war-related industries. They called it off, however, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt, anxious about the potential for violence at the march, issued Executive Order 8802: Fair Employment Practice in Defense Industries. The order barred discrimination in defense hiring, though not in the armed forces. But in 1963, Randolph realized his longstanding ambition to stage a march on the capital when he spearheaded the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
According to Rustin, Randolph believed that sit-ins, marches, and other forms of nonviolent protest were effective methods for securing Black voting rights and equal access to public accommodations. He thought, however, that the coming fight for economic justice would require an emphasis on voter education and the formation of a united front made up of Black civil rights organizations, labor unions, and religious groups. For Randolph, the March on Washington marked the end of what Rustin calls ‘the demonstration period" and the beginning of a new period, one chiefly concerned with economic justice.
Like Randolph, Bayard Rustin was also a committed socialist and labor rights advocate. In the 1930s, he had ties to the Communist Party, which was a serious liability during the Cold War. So too was Rustin's homosexuality; during an era of extreme sexual prejudice, Rustin lived openly as a gay man. As a result, Rustin was not widely known outside the movement, despite being one of its principal architects and most gifted organizers. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes, "Of all the leaders of the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin lived and worked in the deepest shadows, not because he was a closeted gay man, but because he wasn't trying to hide who he was."
The Interviews
This section identifies interview subjects who were boycotters, labor activists, and members of the business community. The first list includes the names of Montgomery bus boycott participants. The second features both labor activists and business owners who helped shape the trajectory of the civil rights struggle.
Montgomery Bus Boycotters
Ralph Abernathy: Founding member of the MIA, SCLC, and leader during the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Frances Belser: Montgomery bus boycotter
John Daniels: Montgomery bus boycotter
Virginia Durr: (1979; 1986): Supporter; Durr, with her husband and Rosa Parks's attorney
Clifford Durr and E. D. Nixon, bailed Parks out of jail following her arrest for defying segregation laws
E. D. Nixon: With Jo Ann Robinson, chiefly responsible for establishing the MIA; leader in the boycott
Mrs. Folgate: Montgomery bus boycotter
Georgia Gilmore: Montgomery bus boycotter; helped raise money to support the boycott
James Hoffman: Montgomery bus boycotter
Donie Jones: Montgomery bus boycotter
Coretta Scott King: Played an important administrative role in the MIA during the boycott
Rufus Lewis: Montgomery bus boycotter; cofounder of the MIA
Gussie Nesbitt: Montgomery bus boycotter
Rosa Parks: In 1955, Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks's arrest instigated the boycott
Jo Ann Robinson: Leader of the WPC and with E. D. Nixon, chiefly responsible for establishing the MIA
B. J. Simms: Director of transportation for the MIA; MIA promotional director
A. W. Wilson: MIA officer; introduced Martin Luther King, Jr. as the new MIA president at the association's first meeting
Labor Activists and the Business Community
Victoria Gray Adams: Independent businesswoman, as well as activist and educator; helped lead a boycott against Hattiesburg businesses
William Coleman: Appointed by President Eisenhower to the President's Commission of Employment Policy, which sought to increase minority hiring in government
Courtland Cox: SNCC activist committed to Black economic empowerment
A.G. Gaston: Businessman and Chamber of Commerce member who helped finance civil rights groups
E. D. Nixon: Montgomery, Alabama, NAACP chair; also led the Montgomery Welfare League and the Montgomery Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, which he helped organize
Bayard Rustin: In 1965, became the director of the labor and civil rights organization the A. Philip Randolph Institute
Bernie Schweid: Co-owner of R. M. Mills bookstores in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, during the sit-in movement and boycott of downtown stores
Normareen Shaw: Owner of Mack's Café in Marion, Alabama, where state troopers shot
Jimmie Lee Jackson; Jackson's death precipitated the Selma to Montgomery march
David J. Vann: One of several white business leaders in Birmingham supportive of integration and critical of Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor
