a. philip randolph. ho by the way at the time was called the most dangerous negro in america by the fbi. a label that they would later decide to use on martin luther king. now, but it's not enough to put your bodies on the line. you also have to think intelligently come here to think strategically, creatively. under a number of people in the movement, many of them on the mall that day who thought and acted very creatively. the civil rights movement was above all a highly intelligent movement. it was created in all kinds of ways. it invented a lot of the everyday strategies and tactics of politics that we now take for granted. one of the strategies that the civil rights movement uniquely brought to american politics, they didn't invent but they brought it to a mass scale, was the practice of civil disobedience. and nonviolent resistance. now, the reason that this is so important is quite simple. the state, according to people has a monopoly on the use of force. it has a monopoly on the use of violence a so

a philip randolph was a professional activist.hey did all kinds of grief things for their people and for this country. but it had to be the ordinary people who were sprawled out in front of them on the national mall. and i just heard a talk last night at philips abbado, who's a psychologist. and he argues about ordinary everyday here with them. he says in order for good to happen in this world, you have to prepare to be a hero. ordinary people have to prepare to be a hero. he had to teach themselves and they have to be ready for whatever extreme situation confronts them, so when the extreme situation comes and it's almost always going to be an unpredictable moments, they are ready to jump in to do the right thing. if you're not ready, you're probably not going to be a hero. and this mall, which contain upwards of 500,000 people, the official estimate is 250. more independent estimates say it's more like 400, but it's doesn't matter. that's what the civil rights movement succeeded. not for the march on washington was so important.

a. philip randolph leading social rights spokesman of the day for a group that was even more isolated ordowntrodden than the jews, black americans. black americans, roosevelt took no action apart from what he did for americans generally against discrimination, racial discrimination in the early years of the new deal. when the defense program began in 40 and were left out in the cold randolph, this was in 1941, randolph announced the march on washington. the expression has since become the thing for everyone to do but at that time it was a new idea. 50,000 people to fanfare and treatment for blacks, you could avoid a national embarrassment. roosevelt defied the will of the southern barons who control the party on capitol hill and got randolph to call off its march by establishing the fair employment practices commission to curb racial discrimination. and to some degree it worked. it was better and it was a step in the right direction. for jews the potential payoff for such tactics was the impact of the palestinian jew, peter bergson, one of the leaders of the campaign to rescue european j