 So our moderator for this panel is Arlene Holt Baker and joining her in this conversation we have Algernon Austin who as I mentioned briefly directs EPIs program on race ethnicity and the economy which really is EPIs initiative to advance policies that enable people of color to fully participate in the American economy and to benefit equitably from all gains that result from prosperity. As the director of this program Algernon authors reports overseas reports and policy analyses on the economic condition of people of color you've probably seen that that gorgeous mug on all kinds of media outlets talking thoughtfully on issues relating to race in the economy racial justice. We also have on this panel Mr. Clarence Lang who is an associate professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Kansas. His research interests are particularly appropriate for this panel as they are working class black history African-American social movements and he is currently working on a volume titled reframing Randolph a reassessment of a Philip Randolph's legacies to labor and to black freedom. So to start off our symposium with lessons learned or understandings about the forgotten history of the March on Washington I'm now going to turn it over to Arlene. Thank you so much Clarence. You know we've said that this evening again it's been referenced by a number of us that in historically people often think of the March on Washington but I have a dream speech of Dr. Martin Luther King but what has been lost in that is the role that labor played the role that women played and the role that the working class played in organizing the march but specifically Clarence I'd like to pose this question to you. I'd like you to share with us the origins of the March on Washington prior to 1963 and the role that labor a Philip Randolph and other labor and civil rights leaders played in what was called then the March on Washington movement and as you elaborate on that I'd also like you to elaborate a little bit more on the role that working class people played and a focus on the role that women played. You're going to have to stop me. I'll probably answer that over the course of a couple of questions but I'll start by saying I think that the immediate origins of the 63 March on Washington for jobs and freedom actually begins during the Second World War. In 1941 when the United States enters the the war against the Axis powers and the US economy which had been mired in this depression begins to mobilize for war what we see are African-Americans being continually shut out of well-paying jobs in the defense industries then there's also the issue of the ways in which African-Americans were marginalized in the military in terms of the roles that they were allowed to play and not play well a Philip Randolph who by this time and he has a he has a history that predates this so I'm giving you the short the short answer who is by this period of time I would argue becoming if he's not yet become sort of the key black labor leaders certainly but actually a key civil rights activist he's the president of the brotherhood of sleeping car porters which is the first all black union to negotiate a contract with a major corporation in this case the Pullman company and Randolph and his his cohort they argue that that obviously in a war that's fought against fascism right against totalitarianism against notions of white supremacy right that there has to be a some consistency with the goals that are being fought abroad and the practices at home and this is part of what people have referred to as a double v campaign double victory victory against fascism abroad but also victory against Jim Crow racial apartheid in the United States and so then he he it sort of develops that something needs to be done and what occurs is is that Randolph through the brother of sleeping car porters forms a coalition made up of a number of organizations the march on Washington movement and the ultimatum is this and Franklin Dillon or Roosevelt is the president at the time that either the president will end discrimination in the defense industries and the armed forces or or the brotherhood of sleeping car porters through the march on Washington movement will bring the number grows right 5,000 10,000 people to DC to effectively expose this contradiction in the war effort to make this demand and and potentially also also how we put it to make very things difficult in terms of business as usual and make a long story short Roosevelt issues executive order 8802 which outlaws discrimination on the basis of race national origin not just african-american but national origin broadly considered in the defense industries the military is not desegregated that comes later but Randolph accepts this and so in exchange for this executive order the marches is suspended and there's an agency that's created out of this executive order the federal fair employment practice commission that serves as a watchdog agency to see that this order is carried out now what happens and I'll wrap up but but what happens is that even though the march is suspended I think people get this mixed up sometimes there are chapters of the march on Washington movement that form in cities across the United States and so while the plan March to DC is suspended at the local level I study St. Louis where you have one of the strongest march on Washington movement units in the nation but other places Chicago what have you what happens is that those local agencies those local committees actually take the fight to a local level so they march on the defense plants because of course even with the executive order and the and the and this agency that's created well businesses don't just comply they have to be forced at the local level so that becomes the origin and there's some there's some some progress that's made and by the end of the war the march on Washington movement is is is disbanded so we move forward to the 19 later 1940s Randolph is engaged in similar action around desegregating the military this occurs during the administration of Harry S. Truman and so many of his contemporaries and people his contemporaries at a time are critical of the fact that no march occurs but to say that it failed as some had said have said in the past I think sort of misses what was happened at the local level and the significance of that executive order which is the first sort of major intervention by the presidency since the emancipation proclamation is a very important important moment and so in some ways the march on Washington that occurs in 1963 is in some respects a fulfillment a fulfillment of that longer term goal I want to talk about the the sort of the latter part of your question but I want to make sure that that we we move along so you just remind me now because I do want to talk about this this this the importance of working class people labor and particularly working class women in the movement so if you'll permit me I'll come back to that perhaps is that okay Elgin on we were talking about the history and what happened here but taking us to 1963 following up on what Clarence was discussing about the movement you know some historians have portrayed it that the civil rights movement as an unmitigated success and so the question to you is did the civil rights activists think that they had achieved the goals at the end of the 60s right yes so there has been I would say I think the an incomplete representation of the civil rights movement on the one hand you know people struggle tremendously people fought people died and we did have tremendous success because of the 1963 march on Washington for jobs and freedom we did get the voting rights acts and the civil rights act in part because of the pressure of the 1963 march on Washington so that was a tremendous success unfortunately however I feel that some historians have focused just on the success and have kind of ignored everything else but I feel that if you really want to respect the march and the struggles the people who fought and died we have to recognize everything that they hope to achieve so if you just look at the demands of the march there were at least four of the seven demands that we didn't achieve and that those are decent housing we still have problems there adequate and integrated education our schools are still quite segregated and they're they're increasing in some area increasingly segregated we still do not have full employment and that was one of the key demands that that motivated a Philip Randolph the director of the march and the demand for a living wage a minimum wage that can lift the family out of poverty we still we're still fighting for that today the minimum wage is less than what it was in 1963 there is no reason for this country to have a minimum wage that in real dollars is less than what is in 1963 it's about two dollars it's a little more than two dollars less than what it was in 1968 we've had a strong and growing economy workers are much more productive today than than they were in the past and yet our minimum wage is lower than what it was in the 1960s so that's a real problem and you can even look to Martin Luther King Jr. now Martin Luther King is such a tremendous and powerful figure what what you know we're trying to do talking about a Philip Randolph is really recognizing the other leaders and really in the 40s as Professor Lang was saying a Philip Randolph was the leader you know after his success with getting pressuring FDR to to do the executive order he was he was the man you know he was the so it's important to remember that history but even Martin Luther King what was he doing when he died he was fighting for sanitation workers and he was organizing the poor people's movement so it's clear that he didn't think he was finished and neither I would say if you look at the demands of the March it's clear that there are many things that they were hoping for that we have yet to achieve thank you can I jump on that question and then I was gonna ask you a follow-up to that oh well okay all right well I was I was going to say that oftentimes when people talk about King's activities in 1968 his support for the sanitation workers strike and the poor people's campaign that he was mobilizing at the time I think oftentimes people see that as a new development in the movement and the point is that in fact we can see that those kind of politics were shot through the movement even from the beginning all right so if we think for example about the Montgomery bus boycott which for better for worse is viewed as a beginning of the modern civil rights movement well that actually that boycott is built on black domestics right black working class women who rode the buses in Montgomery more than any other group in that city any other group and so without them there would not have been a successful Montgomery bus boycott so that's there King had had interactions with the UAW the united automobile auto workers they're the other organizations that Randolph himself created the Negro American Labor Council which was a spearhead in fact of the 63 of the 63 march which was geared toward fair and full employment your presence speaks to one of the the aims of that particular organization that the labor movement in his leadership and his structure should be representative of working people in the United States so these things continue all through all through the movement and I and I I really want to emphasize this point that I think we can see this even more clearly if we move beyond the national organizations and if we look at the local the local organizing that occurred so you will see chapters of the national association for the advancement of colored people the NAACP which oftentimes we think of as kind of a state organization perhaps I mean it's a necessary organization particularly at this moment but you you'll see that you have trade unionists who are leading local chapters of the NAACP the city that I study there's an individual named Ernest Callaway for example who's involved in a Teamsters union which is a major progressive political force in that city right Jimmy Hoffa not with standing right and and but he's complicated he's complicated right but also leading the the local chapter of the NAACP you see that in a number of different different cities the role of black working class women who are domestics who are who are laundresses you have janitors you have you have all walks of life and particularly again when we look at the local level certainly the clergy certainly people who we might consider coming from the stable black middle class are certainly there and their roles but the base of this thing the base of this movement certainly in a period that I'm looking at the 30s through the 70s is working class everyday people inside as well as outside of the labor movement even in cases where they were not able to organize through the mainstream labor movement right they created their own organizations premised on a working class agenda a fair and full employment right community colleges public school health care on down the line and so the march on Washington uh in 1963 again is a moment that brings together that sort of represents this grassroots working class base I wanted to make sure that said that because that was part of the question that you asked previously so that's right and I was going to bring you back to the role especially of the women and I think you've addressed that but just in listening to you certainly when you do think about the sanitation workers and you look at that history it was the women the role that they played even then in supporting and making sure that that strike continued in the sport could you since I asked you about women we talked about them generally but is there a particular of women women or women that you could lift up the role that they played in the movement some come to mind for me but certainly those who were a part of the march on Washington movement that were working class women and a part of civil rights organizations also I think in a literature we're learning more of their names so um the first person who comes to my mind is is Ella Baker um who played a significant role in creating what I think is the most important organization of that period which is the student nonviolent coordinating committee all these organizations were important in my views SNCC as it was called was the most important and that organization really grew out of her efforts to make sure that young people had a space to organize to make mistakes and to and to uh I mean they essentially became the storm troopers of the movement they went into the Mississippi Delta where other organizations were afraid to go um certainly her uh Fannie Lou Hamer uh out of the Mississippi Delta uh sharecropping family um who uh by her own account by reports went to school only one day period in their entire life I would argue is probably one of the most eloquent spokespersons for the aims of the movement the speech that she gave at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 you can you can YouTube it you can if you've not heard it hear it because it's the most eloquent statement uh that I heard that I've heard courageous woman I mean there's definitely there's definitely her but again I think if we move from that national level to the local level the list it grows and it grows and one of the the I would say one of the most exciting things about being uh sort of doing this history being involved in the scholarly production of literature about the civil rights movement is that we have a lot of really good stuff that's coming out that is talking about these local activists who are anonymous for the most part but without whom you would not have had a national movement and I think if we sort of go back to the point of where we are today um clearly we're at a point where where we have to begin to think in very very local terms um that we're at a situation I would say comparable to where we were where the action is going to be at the state levels so whether you're in Kansas and you know you know Kansas is is I would argue is a laboratory um for some of the worst stuff that's happening um but that's what happens if your goal is to be Texas you know what I mean so you follow as it's been stated by the governor of that state you know you know we're gonna gonna follow Texas so I hope I have a job when I get back but you know I'm tenured so I should be I should be fine can I just jump in um I think talking about the role of women in the March in Washington movement uh there's a new book by William Jones titled the March in March in Washington that's released today that does an excellent job about talking about women um in the March in Washington movement and one woman that he highlights who worked with A. Philip Randolph around trying to make the fear employment practices committees permanent was Paulie Murray and she worked with with A. Philip Randolph she was also one of the pioneers in civil disobedience um in 1940 she was arrested on a bus for refusing to give up her seat we know that that's an important action in in civil rights history but she was one of the the pioneers and she was also part of the workers defense league she has a long history but she's one of the the women that that William Jones lifts up in in his book and I just from the historical perspective we must recognize that there were there was not one woman that had a speaking role at the 1963 march on Washington uh there was one that had a role of introducing other women but not any woman that had a speaking role but I think we've come a far cry from that and so today you know I'd like to uh Algenon ask you we which congressman spoke to the need for coalition we all appear as talked about the need for coalition we're starting to see now in the last two years I'd say a number of marches if you will workers taking to the street around the right to be able to be able to bargain immigrants taking to the street for the need for comprehensive immigration reform those who are taking to the street to push for marriage equality and recently certainly we have seen uh young people their parents and their community take to the street around Trayvon Martin yes my question to you is is there an opportunity to link these issues together and do we have what I would call not just a moment around issues but is there an opportunity to build a movement oh that's a really tough question but I would actually I would actually go back to congressman's ellison's point where he said that there were no allies and really the issue of the economic crisis that we're facing is really broad-based um and it's and it really links it's a thread that that that we've we've through all of the issues that you you concern that you mentioned so uh one of the groups that are most exploited in the labor market today are the undocumented named immigrant population because they're undocumented um so uh addressing their needs from a labor perspective is really important young people again another group that is suffering tremendously um given the the weak economy um uh you you know so I think very broadly we're we're in a serious economic crisis that affects uh groups across the line the the incarcerated and the ex ex offender population have very again a very difficult time finding work within this economy and we really need I think the spirit of the march on washington you know was that look we need a job we need to provide a job for everyone who wants to work and I think people across all demographic groups um are are facing that struggle today about how can we find a job given the this economy but also once we have full employment that that brings benefits across the board you know when we have a tight labor market wages grow up and some of that concentration of income and wealth that congressman ellison talked about can be reversed by having a full employment economy let me ask you clarence when you think about the kind of following up to what um how jennon is laid out when you think about the activity that you see in communities today and you're talking about the need for a local movement to start locally and we can build it nationally what do you believe are some of the sparks that are out there that give you hope that we could really build a movement that continues the march and ultimately finishes it so I'll start with the fact that it was mentioned earlier about the food service workers um I'm seeing in my local community in the metropolitan area where I live in laurence kansas but this is sort of part of the kansas city metro area there's a lot of activity that's beginning to percolate on that um so I see people see people moving in that direction I think uh if we if we think about the um sort of the aftermath of this recent supreme court ruling on the voting rights act I think that that creates it's a crisis but it also creates possibly not possibly it creates an opportunity I think for people to go back to the woodshed to organize and and I think part of the organization has to be obviously around restoring the vote right sort of protecting that fighting back against these voter id laws but as part of that as part of that um and taking back the vote the importance of of taking the vote back which is why there's been an attempt to shrink the electorate is that we have at stake the right to collective bargaining and so that has to be part of the agenda as well that the the reason why we need to take back to vote is because we know that for example this rising american electorate that people speak about um people of color women they make up a very dynamic segment of the labor movement if we think about service workers and the like so these things are I would argue are very much interconnected so the right to vote collectively uh to collectively bargain and in fact there's there are some folks who are making the argument that given the attacks recently that have occurred on the um the national um the national labor relations board that perhaps one of the agendas might be making the right to vote amending local state level civil rights laws to include the right to vote as well how they'll play out we'll see that's a political question but I think that that these things are are certainly interrelated I would argue that the biggest key now I would argue um is this issue of mass incarceration I mentioned this at at at the luncheon because in fact I would argue you don't have a Trayvon Martin situation without the phenomenon of mass incarceration which brought in his wake racial profiling and this re-inscription of black criminalization and so I think we have our we have our plate full and we have to find ways where when we're talking about race we're talking about class when we're talking about class we're talking about gender and race because indeed if we think for example uh the issue of of a woman's right to choose I'll just go there um that's an issue that has to do with race and it's certainly an issue that has to do with class in terms of the the decision that people make about their bodies and what have you and so it's not an issue of race here class there gender there sexuality over there that these things are oftentimes colliding perhaps but I would say just as often intersecting and finding those those moments where we can see these things coming together the food service workers are one um the vote I think very much critical to that and also if I might add very very quickly this issue I think everyone whether you're black or white we all have an issue uh we all have an interest a stake and and really sort of fighting back against this kind of um of this this sort of sanctioning of arbitrary violence because I would argue that as as an African American historian black people have historically been a laboratory on which right things for better and for worse are worked out that affect the rest of the population so if we think about the ability of people to shoot down someone who is minding his own business and to walk away with an acquittal let's not think that that doesn't have for example the possibility of coming back on people who are organizing for collective bargaining rights let's not forget that the labor movement in the United States was one of the most violent periods in the world those struggles that took place in the late 19th century and so if we allow this kind of tragedy to occur and that becomes a precedent there's nothing to say that when people are organizing for the rights to unionize for collective bargaining that those form of violence that those forms of violence won't be visited on them as well thank you aljanine at epi you think a lot about the policy piece and the connecting it to policy but again thinking about the moment that we're in and the opportunity to address the concerns of so many that are crying for freedom whether it's the women in texas in virginia the workers in wisconsin and lately certainly the bankruptcy in michigan how do you how are you thinking about how do we have the narrative that links up the justice piece to the economics again you're giving me all the easy questions yeah that's a that's a really tough question and i think again we have to go back to the broad the broad vision that a philip brandolph had you know and and for him you know the the issue of i mean it was completely interconnected right the issue of the exclusion of black workers from the defense is defense industry was both a racial justice issue and an economic justice issue you couldn't separate them and i think many of as i said before many of the struggles that we're facing today are connected to the economic inequality that we're seeing are connected to the disempowerment of of of the american public in many ways i mean again to go a little bit off off the central topic i mean with the the president obama's recent attempts to get gun control legislation you have the majority of the public in support of some type of reform and yet it doesn't pass um and that's unfortunately uh connected to again something that congressman ellison talked about the the influence of money and and lobbyists in politics so we have a real crisis in our democracy right now um and you know one of the important sort of countervailing forces is is labor unfortunately that's why labor is under attack right um so we really need to do more to broaden a host of issues a host host of organizations i mean traditional civil rights organizations but um it's it's also crucial that we figure out how to strengthen and expand labor because as the march in washington movement shows many other progressive movements are connected to the labor movement so so that's part of the struggle we we need to build movements of the grassroots and particularly i would say the labor movement because the crisis that that's being broadly short now is the economic crisis but also a lot of the civil rights struggles are connected to to the labor struggles and to the growing uh economic inequality that we're seeing in the country today absolutely this question i'm going to pose to the both of you uh if you had and i think it could be several but if you had one economic policy that you would propose that we move to give an opportunity uh to young people of color so that they could have hope for their economic future what would that be you go first oh i have to choose only one that's that's i could give you two no but i'm going to go back to the to the full employment right because um you know it the i think the the outlook of young people today would be so different if they knew that when they finish high school or finish college they could get a good job um you know and i think if you were to ask them what they wanted i think that would be certainly if not number one certainly in the top three of their concerns um you know and unfortunately if you're looking at young people of color young african americans young latinos um in particular uh when they're faced with with quite high levels of unemployment that increases the likelihood uh that they may get involved or entangled with the criminal justice system uh so making sure that those young people have a job um will have positive effects you know in a in a multitude of ways i i agree completely and he's made it so easy for me to agree with him but i mean but i think fair and full employment solves a lot of problems so i mean in terms of most of i mean if we think about the people who are filling our prisons these are nonviolent drug offenses of people trying to patch together a living um through means that that sometimes are legal and other times aren't employment is is the key i would argue i would have to agree with that they had uh a future of employment at living wages living way with union protection and i was going to say but they have to have that right to have the voice at work yeah that in there would help guarantee it i think we're going to probably running out of time but uh this is a question i'd like to pose to the two of you just in looking historically we started talking about a philip randolph and i'm reminded that a philip randolph in fact was able to meet with five presidents rosabelle truman eisenhower johnson and uh kennedy and johnson and so i asked the two of you if a philip randolph were alive today and he were able to meet with president for rock obama what do you think that conversation would be like i'll let you go okay that's fair that's fair i mean i i think first of all we you know we'd have to recognize that if a philip randolph were meeting with president obama it wouldn't be because he wanted to have coffee and conversation when he met with us presidents he was coming to ask and demand something so we have to be cognizant of that and so i would i would i would i would imagine randolph saying something to the effect in his baritone voice you know that you know the only time that the us presidency has been an effective ally of people who were struggling for whatever goal they're struggling for is when there was some pressure and so first of you can graduate so i'm going to do your favor and i'm gonna gonna make it easy for you to help perhaps shepherd through an american jobs act and so tomorrow don't be surprised when you see uh me at a press conference announcing that we're going to stage a march on washington unless there's some effective executive action taken and good day to you sir that's my guess right that's my guess i say hello to michelle i agree completely uh i mean he he would clearly you know for him you know he said look looking out in 1963 i see six million black and white people unemployed and millions more in poverty um today there are 12 million people of all races unemployed and millions more in poverty he would think that there's a lot of work to be done and like uh professor lang says he recognizes that you have to put pressure on the administration to to get motion but i i think he would not necessarily focus simply on obama i mean it's congress right you know obama proposed the the american job acts but there is tremendous opposition in congress so i think he would mobilize to really put pressure uh to lift up the issue of jobs and to try to to get those congress people to pay attention to to working people thank you and i guess in thinking about that would president obama say to him make me do it as the president said to uh randolph i think we don't have very much on we had wanted to have an opportunity with one or two questions but i don't know if we have that time yet christian but uh if you tell me we have a second or at least a minute or two we're going to uh have some very fortunate person uh be able to pose a question to our panelists and okay i will so if you're no burning questions not comments for questions yes i see the young young man here say no could you repeat the question please if i heard of he's was asking if we thought the federal government was still capable of moving forward in terms of good policy and and us being able to mobilize in a way to make it happen i think that was the question posed this is a good question and obviously we're in very different times and then randolph is i mean clearly the government is is dysfunctional um by design i think in in some respects so really i think that the the the i think the key right now is is that i don't know that the federal government at this point in history at this moment is a vehicle for the kinds of changes that we might be envisioning and imagining and i really do come back to the fact that we're we're back to where people were in montgomery in 1955 where we have to figure out you have to fight where you're standing and whether that's in kansas whether that's in new york state or michigan would have you i think that we have to begin to to build and dig where where we stand that's the best that i can do yeah i would i agree you know are we right now we have a highly dysfunctional democracy uh but we still as as individuals as voters we still do have power um i think it's the the issue is a matter of mo mobilizing um to put pressure on the the places where our our our democracy is stuck um so i think there there needs to be more organizing more conscious consciousness raising to address the problems that make make it difficult for our democracy to function properly but i i think it's possible possible but yes it's quite difficult there wasn't a possibility for the civil rights act in 1964 without first fair employment laws in various states where people were able to get them passed and i think that that's the key again i think this is going to wrap up our panel uh and i would just say thank you so much professor lang thank you so much hush and i'm for uh being a part of this i think it's been a rich discussion it's a discussion that must continue among all of us we understand that the march is not finished there is still so much work for us to do if we're going to ultimately have the kind of freedom and shared prosperity for all of americans let us commit ourselves to finishing the march thank you so much thank you