34 pages • 1 hour read
David BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Despite his humble Florida upbringing, A. Philip Randolph was a brilliant student from a young age whose dignity, well-spoken demeanor, and self-restraint defined him. In adulthood, he moved to Harlem, where, influenced by his adherence to Marxist philosophy, he became a labor organizer. Working tirelessly on behalf of Black workers in the railway car service industry, he organized and led the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, through which efforts he achieved a reduction in the number of monthly work-hours and several other concessions. As a Civil Rights Movement activist, he was instrumental in convincing President Harry Truman to issue Order 9981 in 1948, which ended segregation in the US Armed Forces.
One of his followers, Bayard Rustin, became his protégé in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a lifelong friend. The same staunch nonviolent resistance that Randolph employed also characterized Rustin’s life, although his homosexuality and immoderate temper often resulted in imprisonment and other public disgrace. When Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. eventually turned his back on Rustin for his sexuality, Randolph adamantly stood by him. Randolph and Rustin were both in the organizing leadership of the March on Washington, at which Reverend King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
This chapter’s thematic focus is on dignity and self-restraint in the face of adversity, even in the face of verbal and physical abuse. While Randolph was less often physically attacked than Rustin, both men employed a nonviolent approach in their resistance that was strongly influenced by biblical prophets, as well as Mahatma Gandhi. They both firmly believed that simply showing up and refusing to budge, essentially becoming nonviolent human obstructions, would serve to turn their abusers’ despicable tactics against them—to show their sins for how ugly and reprehensible they were. Brooks points out, “We think of public-spiritedness as self-assertion, but historically it has been a form of self-government and self-control” (133). Both men refused to bend to abuse in the public eye; Randolph once sat in a train car overnight, through several meals’ worth of waiters refusing to serve him, and Rustin repeatedly endured beatings with a calm demeanor even while seriously injured.
Randolph and Rustin share center stage as protagonists in this section. Randolph’s steadfast, sterling example and dauntless leadership inspired Rustin and countless other young members of the Civil Rights Movement. It was Randolph’s direct influence and mentorship that Rustin found the strength and determination to persist in his own acts of nonviolent resistance. Rustin also found the strength to start over again several times, even after the spreading of details about his promiscuous sex life destroyed his public image. Both men relied upon and admired each other at various points in their lives, inextricably entwined.
From New York City’s famous neighborhood of Harlem to the streets of Chicago to Washington, DC, Randolph’s and Rustin’s shared story spans the width and breadth of the United States during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Randolph’s life and activism were deeply affected by the Great Depression and the Labor Movement, while Rustin’s life was significantly altered by his resistance of being drafted into WWII. That both men were present for the March on Washington alongside Reverend King is the most evocative element, both visually and conceptually, in their narrative.
By David Brooks