A. Philip Randolph

Activist

1889-04-15 – 1979-05-16

American labor union leader and civil-rights activist. He founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and helped drive the 1963 March on Washington. He died in 1979.

Quotes by A. Philip Randolph

At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.
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At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.
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Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.
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Debs is greater than Lincoln. Debs is the spokesman of the great struggling working class of all races, nationalities, creeds, sexes.
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I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, 'We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.'
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We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.
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I don't ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.
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If we have white persons in the March, we are certain to have trouble with the Communists, and it may not be viewed as a true expression of the Negro's protest.
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Since almost all Negroes are workers, live on wages, and suffer from the high cost of food, clothing and shelter, it is obvious that the Republican and Democratic Parties are opposed to their interests.
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A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.
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Freedom is never given; it is won.
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