“Freedom is never granted; it is won.”

A. Philip Randolph, chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom; a towering 20th-century civil rights & labor leader (Image: MT)

Most Americans have never heard of A. Philip Randolph, but he belongs in the pantheon of this country’s greatest civil rights and labor leaders.

As a champion of African American rights, Randolph rivaled Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and any president or other elected official.