What is the A. Philip Randolph Institute?
November 10, 2009
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A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin founded APRI with the belief that workers’ rights and civil rights were inseparable. Randolph (1889-1979) was the greatest black labor leader in American history and the father of the modern civil rights movement. Rustin (1912-1987), a leading civil rights and labor activist and strategist, was the chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and was Randolph’s greatest protégé. Randolph and Rustin recognized that blacks and working people of all colors share the same goals: political and social freedom and economic justice. On the tails of one of the civil rights movement’s greatest achievements – passage of the Voting Rights Act – Randolph and Rustin founded the A. Phillip Randolph Institute in 1965. The mission is to continue the struggle for social, political and economic justice for all working Americans. Today, APRI is led by President Clayola Brown whose vision and energy has sparked a new beginning for the organization and the fight for racial equality and economic justice.
