Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph - Andrew E. Kersten

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n nAt none time, Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was a household name. As president of nthe all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), he was an embodiment nof America's multifaceted radical tradition, a leading spokesman for Black nAmerica, and a potent symbol of trade unionism and civil rights agitation for nnearly half a century. But with the dissolution of the BSCP in the 1970s, the nassaults waged against organized labor in the 1980s, and the overall silencing nof labor history in U.S. popular discourse, he has been largely forgotten among nlarge segments of the general public before whom he once loomed so large. nHistorians, however, have not only continued to focus on Randolph himself, but nhis role (either direct, or via his legacy) in a wide range of social, npolitical, cultural, and even religious milieu and movements. n n n nThe authors of Reframing Randolph have taken Randolph's dusty portrait down from nthe wall to reexamine and reframe it, allowing scholars to regard him in new, nand often competing, lights. This collection of essays gathers, for the very nfirst time, many genres of perspectives on Randolph. Featuring both established nand emergent intellectual voices, this project seeks to avoid both hagiography nand blanket condemnation alike. The contributors represent the diverse ways nthat historians have approached the importance of his long and complex career nin the main political, social, and cultural currents of twentieth-century nAfrican American specifically, and twentieth-century U.S. history overall. The ncentral goal of Reframing Randolph is nto achieve a combination of synthetic and critical reappraisal.n