It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC, a special edition of our show beginning now, as we recognize

that today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington that gave us Martin Luther

King's iconic, I Have a Dream speech.

And in just a second, we're going to take a different tack to commemorate the anniversary

and tie a two today.

We're not going to play the I Have a Dream excerpts like you're probably hearing elsewhere

today.

We're going to focus more on the larger context of the March and on organizer A. Philip

Randolph, most well known as a labor as well as civil rights leader who was founding president

of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

He was also in New York or much of his life, attended City College, lived in Harlem and

other New York things.

He was a mentor to Dr. King and nearly twice his age, 74 at the time of the March on Washington

compared to kings, what would he have been?

He would have been 34 and or 33.

And the designer of the idea of a March on Washington at all in the modern sense was

a Philip Randolph, 27 years earlier.

And he threatened a big March on Washington in 1941 to protest discrimination in the

defense industry and a piece of largely forgotten history.

He actually got president Franklin Roosevelt to enact some anti-discrimination policies

in exchange for calling off the plan in 1941 March on Washington.

But he was back as a director of the one in 63 and he gave his own stirring seven minute

...