A. Philip Randolph: And The African-American Labor Movement (Portraits of Black Americans)

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About A. Philip Randolph: And The African-American Labor

Product Description Traces the life of the civil rights activist who organized the labor union for Pullman car porters and crusaded for the desegregation of the armed forces. From School Library Journal Grade 7 Up–Randolph lived a long, fascinating life, characterized by his single-minded drive to achieve racial equality for African Americans. In the course of 40 years, he faced down two U.S. presidents, defeated a powerful railroad company, and was the force behind the 1963 March on Washington. Miller depends heavily on existing scholarly and popular Randolph biographies. He tells the story in much the same way as it was told before, such as in Catherine Reef's A. Philip Randolph: Union Leader and Civil Rights Crusader (Enslow, 2001) and Lillie Patterson's A. Philip Randolph: Messenger for the Masses (Facts On File, 1995). Still, for readers with no knowledge of the subject, the overview approach makes Randolph and his achievements more accessible, and the book is certainly enhanced by the archival photographs of pivotal moments in the man's life and times. –Carol Jones Collins, Columbia High School, Maplewood, NJ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Gr. 7-10. Aside from a suspect bit of legend building at the beginning (as children, if Randolph and his brother did not fight back against bullying, their mother "would whip them, for she hated cowards") and a reliance on previously published sources only, Miller lucidly traces Randolph's spectacular career while presenting a case study in the effective use of hard-nosed rhetoric and nonviolent tactics to achieve breakthroughs in the fight against segregation. Profusely illustrated with photographs, sometimes in color, and capped by resource lists, this portrait of the fiery civil rights leader will be useful in small and medium-sized libraries as a replacement or alternative for such out-of-print titles as Sally Hanley's A. Philip Randolph (1989). John Peters Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved