The Civil Rights Movement is popularly known to have started in the mid 1950’s—but I do agree with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s article “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past” that the Civil Rights movement did not begin so late. Structurally, culturally, and ideologically the Civil Rights movement began decades before the nation became aware of it. The work of civil rights activists such as A Philip Randolph, beginning in the mid 1920’s, affected change in the structure of government by pushing for anti-discriminatory legislation for Black workers. Further affecting structural institutions was the effect that World War II had on Black Americans, who were disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the United States fighting for …show more content…
A Philip Randolph, an African American Civil rights and labor leader played an integral role in enabling the legislation that allowed Black Americans economic opportunity that they had so desperately been alienated from. Randolph most notably began his political work with creating the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925 and pushing for the rights of Black workers on that organization. He successfully unified a disparate and disaffected population of Black workers who had been largely excluded from major labor union organizations (Marable, 9). The Railway Labor Act of 1926 was a law that “granted collective bargaining rights to railway workers but excluded service workers such as porters, cooks, and waiters”( Marable, 16). This exclusion effectively disempowered Black workers, who were the primary demographic of these railway service workers, from furthering any economic improvements. Randolph, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and with the help of the American Federation League and Senator Robert F Wagner successfully lobbied legislators to remove this exclusion in 1935 (Marable, 16). This victory continued the legislative gains that civil rights groups …show more content…
Board of Education (Jones, 93) and the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 (Jones,89) would be to misunderstand the breadth of the Civil Rights Movement. Beginning in the 1920’s, civil rights activists such as Marcus Garvey and A Philip Randolph made civil rights gains with their ability to organize fellow civil rights activists into meaningful groups. A Philip Randolph went on to structurally change the United States with legislation to help secure the rights of black workers. The political gains that were made by Black Americans in reaction to World War II would further lay the groundwork for legislative power for Black Americans. The zoot suiters used their culture of rebellion and resistance to challenge white power and defend ethnic pride, a similar type of defiance that would be a crying call of the Black Power movement of the mid 1960’s and 1970’s (Joseph). In her article “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past”, Jasquelyn Dowd Hall aptly argues why the Civil Rights Movement actually began decades before national awareness of it in in the mid 1950’s, and in doing so recognizing the slow burn that was necessary to lead to the explosion in the mid 1950’s and 1960’s. An explosion that would make many Americans face the brutal realities of racism against Black