Atlanta Daily World

NAACP Decries Censure Of A. Philip Randolph

NEW YORK - Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has branded as "an incredible cover-up" the AFL-CIO "censure" of A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the only Negro vice president of the labor federation.

The complete text of Mr. Wilkins' statement follows:

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People believes that the AFL-CIO's 'censure' of A. Philip Randolph is an incredible cover-up.

The so-called report made to the Federation's Executive Council by a three-man subcommittee is simply a refusal to recognize the unassailable facts of racial discrimination and segregation inside organized labor, as well as an evasion on the part of the AFL-CIO leadership of its own responsibility in fanning racism within affiliated unions.

"The perfume used by the AFL-CIO to try to smother the malodorous racism in labor's ranks fades before the ironic fact that the spokesman for the Executive Council's Subcommittee which rebuked Mr. Randolph was George M. Harrison, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, an international union which, for over half a century, has 'Jim Crowed' Negro railway workers into segregated locals in the North as well as in the South. It has limited their job rights by negotiating discriminatory promotional clauses in collective bargaining agreements.

"The attack upon A. Philip Randolph can only be regarded as a further indication of the moral bankruptcy of the AFL-CIO leadership.

"We of the NAACP certainly believe in cooperation between the Negro community and organized labor but such cooperation cannot be based upon Negroes remaining silent regarding racist practices within trade unions.

"We reject the Federation's statement that A. Philip Randolph caused 'the gap which has developed between organized labor and the Negro community.'

If such a 'gap' exists it is because Mr. Meany and the AFL-CIO Executive Council have not taken the required action to eliminate the broad national pattern of anti-Negro practices that continues to exist in many significant sections of the American labor movement, even after five-and-a-half years of the merger and the endless promise to banish Jim Crow.

"We know that the entire Negro community will rally to the cause of Mr. Randolph which is the cause of all who struggle for a truly democratic labor movement committed to social justice and equality of treatment for all who toil."