Asa Philip Randolph was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, the American Labor Movement. He founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters which was a labor party for African Americans. He is noted to be the head of the March on Washington which happened in 1963, also where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous I have a dream speech. Randolph wrote this during the Civil Rights Movement to rally people to march into Washington. Just before the march was supposed to happen, Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters influenced President Roosevelt to pass the Fair Employment Practices Committee to eliminate segregation in all branch of the government. In passing this executive order, Roosevelt caused Randolph to pull back the march as they had gotten what they wanted.
The type of document presented is a speech. The meaning of the document in its own time is for the Black Americans of the day to wake up and stand up for their rights. He thought the only way to achieve those rights were to “wake up and shock white America as it has never been shocked before.” The motives for writing this document was to get equal rights for African Americans, for them to fight for “the crisis of democracy” (Randolph, 227). His intended audience were black people, though they were not the only…show more content… However, this argument is broken down into several categories, the first and biggest being desegregating the government. To do this, Randolph called for the President to issue an executive order, which people would theoretically be forced to follow — a step in the right direction. Another sub point to this argument is African Americans standing up for their rights. Nothing will happen if they just stand around and let it happen, which is why Randolph says they must not lay dormant for any longer, they must “shake up white America… official Washington” (Randolph,
