During President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first two terms, under the auspices of the so-called Black Cabinet, a complaint-driven system was heralded as an effective strategy for resolving disputes regarding discriminatory behavior against African Americans. It also helped Democrats craft an appeal to Black voters, which helped Roosevelt win an unprecedented third term in the 1940 election against Republican Wendell Willkie.
By the early 1940s, however, many African Americans had grown skeptical that simply securing a few Black appointments in the executive branch, while of great symbolic importance, was an effective or meaningful path toward racial equality.
The formation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) was a great victory for Randolph and the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), and the agency’s work over the next several years gave rise to a new form of relationship between civil rights organizations and the president. This new agency gave those groups a foothold to intervene in national administrative debates over jobs and economic opportunities for African Americans. Randolph’s threat to march on Washington and Roosevelt’s reaction created a blueprint for tangible action on the civil rights front during the 1940s and 1950s, especially within the federal government.
The FEPC’s role in facilitating anti-discrimination practices within the federal government in the 1940s is often overshadowed by the more prominent, public-facing work in the private sector. These lesser-known efforts by the FEPC to document and eliminate discrimination within the federal workforce created an infrastructure for civil rights activists to draw on during President Truman’s presidency, as they pressed for full desegregation of the armed forces and civil service. This legacy emphasizes that the FEPC’s influence did not end with its demise in 1946, when southern Democrats blocked legislation to create a permanent committee.
Thanks to the southern Democrats, the FEPC had a short life. Nevertheless, Randolph and other civil rights leaders saw it as a major step forward for African Americans in the struggle to end employment discrimination. However, Randolph considered the desegregation of the armed forces and the civil service to be unfulfilled aspirations of the MOWM, and he saw the president as a viable path toward reform.
Truman was a more willing ally of the civil rights leaders than his predecessor. He was a border-state politician with close ties to Southern legislators and strong sympathy for the region they represented. But he saw himself as Roosevelt’s heir and the steward of the executive-centered New Deal state.
Despite the FEPC’s short life, Executive Order 8802 had an important legacy. Building on the momentum he and other civil rights activists had gained during Roosevelt’s third term, Randolph and his allies continued to pressure the White House to take executive action in pursuit of their objectives during the Truman administration. Randolph and other civil rights organizations pressured Truman to issue Executive Order 9980, which built on the work begun by Roosevelt and the FEPC to uproot discriminatory federal employment practices. It forbade racial and ethnic discrimination in the federal civil service and established the Fair Employment Board to monitor hiring.
Their credible threat to mount a boycott of the Jim Crow military resulted in Executive Order 9981, which desegregated the armed forces. While the order did not explicitly single out racial segregation, President Harry Truman established a committee that set the stage for the integration of the armed forces.
With the rise of the charismatic young civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the mid-1950s, Randolph proposed another march on Washington. In May 1957, nearly 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the third anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and urge the federal government to follow through on its decision in the trial.
Then, in 1963, Randolph worked with fellow activist Bayard Rustin to spearhead the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on August 28, when King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
A. Philip Randolph and his March on Washington Movement forged a significant pathway to fuller citizenship for African Americans.
