The Story of a Creative/Innovative Person that took a Risk

 I have chosen to talk about Asa Phillip Randolph as a creative and innovator. Randolph was one of the many Trail Blazers of the Civil rights movement. He was an activist, a leader, and an organizer of many marches, meetings, rallies, agencies, and unions. Randolph accumulated a great deal of accomplishments over the duration of his life. He first started off his journey as an activist when he founded The Brotherhood of Labor as a means to connect and organize Black workers, afterwards he rallied against the poor living conditions of a steam ship that he was working on. He soon founded a political magazine, continued to help unionize workers, and started to lecture at the Rand School of Social Science.  

In 1925 Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Cars. He fought for over a decade to officially unionize the brotherhood under the American Federation of Labor, which usually denied Black workers' inclusion. In 1937 he won the Brotherhood of Sleeping Cars' membership into the AFL making them the first Black union in the United States. Later down the road he withdrew their membership due to discrimination and took it to a federal level. In the 1940s Randolph organized mass protests to battle discrimination and prejudice in the workplace and organized the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation, these led to executive orders banning racial segregation in the military and racial discrimination at federal factories.  

 
Randolph became the Vice President of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, founded the Negro American Labor Council, and organized the Youth Marches for Integrated Schools. Randolph was a key organizer in the famed March on Washington in 1963 in which Martin Luther King Jr. shared his "I Have a Dream" speech. Randolph was one of the civil rights leaders that met with the president after the march. A year later he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and founded the A. Phillip Randolph Institute.  

Randolph's determination, accomplishments, and success are very admirable. His dedication to his work is something that all people should aspire to achieve. Randolph's creative genius and knack for innovation is impossible to miss when looking at all he did in helping build the framework and support for the Civil Rights movement.