1889-1979
Editor, Labor Leader

Most Dangerous.

In the latter half of the 1910s, when any dissent against American government policy could be punished by a long prison term, A. Philip Randolph was one of the nation's most vociferous dissidents, criticizing American policy in World War I and American capitalism as a whole. A radical activist, Randolph was editor of the Messenger, which issued its first monthly volume in November 1917. Randolph and his partner, Chandler Owen, were among a group known as the New Negroes, who were strong voices against American racism throughout the decade, particularly during the war years. By 1919 Randolph and Owen, nicknamed "Lenin and Trotsky" around Harlem, were referred to as "the most dangerous Negroes in the United States," and the Messenger was called by the U.S. Department of Justice "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications...