Amercian Politics

这篇文章主要描述伦道夫的一生的经历和其政治传奇色彩，也侧面反映出了美国是一个个人主义、竞争性的，并且带有种族歧视性社会，通过作者的不断奋斗，终将种族主义的思想慢慢淡化，努力争取黑人的社会政治地位。

At the dawn of the 21st Century, there three significant areas of American life where the color line has been weakened (if not entirely vanquished): organized labor, the United states Armed Forces and the civil rights movement. America is an individualistic, competitive society. 20th Century African Americans reflected those social values as deeply as any other group. The color line however, rejected our individuality. Segregation denied us inclusion in the larger society.

Discrimination limited our opportunity to compete on our own terms. For Americans of color, the strategy of empowerment available to us was one of unity and cooperation not self-centered competition. This essay will talk about two men, Asa Phillip Randolph and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. who both empowered African Americans as individuals. Asa Phillip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent, Florida. Raised in Abolitionist traditions by his minister father. Randolph moved to the Harlem district of New York City in 1911. He attended City College at night, and, with Chandler Owen, founded an employment agency in 1912. Through it he hoped to organize black workers. In 1917, following the entry of the United States in World War I, the two men founded a magazine named The Messenger. After 1929 it was renamed The Black Worker. The magazine called for more positions in the war industry and the armed forces for blacks.

After the war, Randolph lectured at New York’s Rand School of Social Science and ran unsuccessfully for offices on the Socialist Party ticket. In 1925, as founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph began organizing that group of African American workers and, at a time when half the affiliates of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) barred blacks from membership, took his union into the AFL. Despite opposition, he built the first successful black trade union.

The brotherhood won its first major contract with Pullman Company in 1937. The following year, Randolph removed his union from the AFL in protest against its failure to fight discrimination in its ranks and took the brotherhood into the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He then returned to the question of black employment in the federal government and in industries with federal contracts. He warned President D. Roosevelt that he would lead thousands of blacks in a protest march on Washington D.C., in which he did. On June 25, 1941 President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order, barring discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. In 1955 AFL merged with the CIO, Randolph was made a vice president and member of the executive council of the combined organization. Randolph was a man of non-violence. For his outspoken leadership Randolph’s opponents characterized him as “the most dangerous Negro in America.”

Unlike Randolph, Adam Clayton Powell had a style that was total opposite from Randolph’s. Powell used power from the inside-out, whereas Randolph worked from the outside-in. Powell was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1908. His father who missed by one month being born into slavery, pastured the most prestigious African American church in New York City, Abyssinian Baptist. Powell stopped and started through a checkered college career, first attending City College of New York. Eventually, he flunked out. After flunking our, Powell went into serious part mode. In the 20s Harlem was a wild bachelor’s paradise. The little money he made as a kitchen helper he spent on gambling, women, and liquor. But Adam’s father pushed him back into college, this time to almost all white Colgate University in up-state New York. Powell began studies to become a surgeon but, later, realized that one day his father’s well-off church could be his for the asking, so he changed his mind about medicine to become a minister.

After graduating from Colgate University he enrolled into Union Theological Seminary, then later in Columbia University Teachers College, where he eventually took a master’s degree in religious education. As Powell matured into adulthood, he began speaking out against the institutional racism ingrained in New York. In a short time, he raked up successes in getting jobs back for doctors, forcing bus companies to hire African American drivers and mechanics, as well as squeezing white store owners with the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaign. In 1941, he became New York City’s first African American councilman. By 1944, he had won a seat in Congress. It was heady, but lonely as one of the only two African Americans in the U.S. House. While Powell resided into Congress for allowing lynching of African-American men to continue. He railed against the unconstitutional Southern practice of charging African American voters poll taxes.”

Powell played it dirty, if any of his colleagues ignored him and voted down his proposals; if any of the presidents wouldn’t grant him proposal session to discuss civil rights or helping the poor, Powell made vicious public statement or sent embarrassing telegrams to the press describing their insensitivity. Powell was a pride personified. He would enter the congressional dining room and barber shop Knowing full well that African Americans were not served there, and demanded service were not served there, and demanded service. He won it. He badgered racist congressmen and stopped their habit of saying the word nigger in sessions of Congress. One of the most dangerous legislative weapons was the Powell Amendment, a rider he tried to attach to any proposals for federal funds. The Amendment was that, if successfully attached to a bill, it would nullify federal grants to state or local governments if the agencies receiving the money discriminated. Voters from Harlem elected Powell as their reprehensive nearly two dozen times.

After the election of 1960, Powell took over as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. In that role, he had more concrete power than any African American man on the planet. This is were Powell made his greatest contributions. He oversaw passage of the backbone of President Kennedy’s New Frontier” and President Johnson’s Great Society” social programs. Powell had no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Ultimately, Powell used up his political currency. Members of the House, happy to find a reason to silence him, expelled him for pocketing congressional employment paychecks to his wife, and taking junkets abroad with female staffers. The fighter in him took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. He won back his seat.

But the people of Harlem grew tired of Powell’s unbelievable record of roll call absences and endless litigations. In 1970, they finally voted him out. Two year later, he died of prostate cancer at the age of 63. Powell was an egocentric, self-indulgent, and a often treacherous person, the opposite of Randolph. But if I have to say I like Powell’s style better. He didn’t care about anything but getting his point across, he would step on anybody shoes; look at the many wives he had. Both men contributed a lot to the African American race. Today, African American union members earn 37 percent more than their non-union counterparts. Labor unions have helped us fulfill our legitimate demands from better jobs, better working conditions, a living wage, affordable healthcare and secure retirement. We give this thanks to Asa Phillip Randolph. Powell on the other hand was a risk taker who made it possible for later generations of African-American politicians such as Jesse Jackson, etc.

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