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Leaders Of The Labor Movement

 

Tuskegee Airmen

African-American pilots commonly known as the Tuskegee Airmen fought against the enemy in the air and against racism and segregation on the ground. Their patriotism and combat success led to military integration in 1948 with President Truman's Executive Order 9981.

Randolph, A Philip (1889-1979)

An important labor movement leader, in 1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black union in the American Federation of Labor. He influenced both presidents Roosevelt and Truman in the 1940s to sign Executive Orders banning discrimination in defense industries, civil service and the military. In the 1960s many viewed him as the "elder statesman" of the Civil Rights Movement.

Hosea Hudson was a Communist Party (CP) activist and industrial union organizer in Alabama and Georgia during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He embodied the CP's turn toward black civil rights in the early 1930s and the attraction many working-class southern blacks felt toward the Party during and, in Hudson's case, well after the Depression decade.

An important labor movement leader, in 1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black union in the American Federation of Labor. He influenced both presidents Roosevelt and Truman in the 1940s to sign Executive Orders banning discrimination in defense industries, civil service and the military. In the 1960s many viewed him as the "elder statesman" of the Civil Rights Movement.

Revels Cayton fought for civil rights throughout his life. In 1940 he joined Paul Robeson and five others in filing a discrimination suit against a San Francisco restaurant that refused to serve the group. He was the executive secretary of the National Negro Congress when, in 1946, it petitioned the United Nations Director-General to submit the "denial of constitutional rights to 13,000,000 U.S. Negroes to the international tribunal."

Ford, James W. (1893-1957)

James W. Ford was Special Organizer of the Communist Party's Harlem section and the most prominent black Communist in the nation during the 1930s and early 1940s. Perhaps more than any other figure, Ford symbolized the Party's efforts to build a united front between African Americans and the white working class.

Blackwell, Lucien E. (1931- )

Lucien Blackwell lacked formal higher education, but he persevered through the “school of hard knocks.”  He first found employment working on the waterfront of Philadelphia.  Beginning as an unskilled laborer, he gradually moved up to foreman, and then vice president, business agent and eventually, in 1973, president of Local 1332, International Longshoreman’s Association of the AFL-CIO.  company.

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