Aphiliprandolph
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Boosted John Autry (@[email protected])
June 18, 1941 - Less than two weeks before a scheduled march on Washington, its chief organizer, (Asa) A. Philip Randolph, was invited to the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt. Randolph was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union. He, along with activist and singer Bayard Rustin, had issued a “Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense on July 1, 1941.”
Roosevelt was wary of the prospect of such a demonstration and desirous of developing support for a war effort. Randolph told Roosevelt he would abandon the march plans only if the president would stop job discrimination in both the defense industry and the government. Before the end of the month, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which barred government contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin.
The order, sometimes called a second emancipation proclamation, was the federal government's most significant action on behalf of the rights of African Americans since post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s.
