Mission & Nature of Activities

The Senior Constituency Group of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ( AFL-CIO )

1965 The year 1,000 black schoolchildren were arrested for attempting to march in front of an Alabama county courthouse. The year 25,000 people joined the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March. The year the Voting Rights Act removed barriers preventing blacks from voting.

1965 Also was the year the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), a national organization of black trade unionists, was founded.

APRI's mission, from our founding to the present, has been to fight for racial equality and economic justice. Our role is unique we work with black trade unionists, the people best suited to serve as a bridge between labor and the black community.

APRI spearheads what we term the "Black-Labor Alliance." We build black community support for the trade union movement, and convey to labor the needs and concerns of black Americans.With more than 150 chapters in 36 states, APRI members are involved in political and community education, lobbying, legislative action and labor support activities. You can join our fight by joining APRI.

• How do we go about building an economically just and racially equal society?

We seek structural changes through the American democratic process. From courthouse to state house to the White House, APRI members actively promote social, economic, labor, political and legislative issues.

We support:
• Civil rights, strong anti-discrimination measures and affirmative action
• Policies to promote a decent wage, high growth, full employment economy
• Labor law reform and worker health and safety protections
• Decent minimum living standards for all, including anti-poverty programs, a fair minimum wage and a comprehensive "safety net"
• Universal, affordable health care
• Family leave and child care
• Progressive and fair tax policies
• International workers' rights and fair trade Education and training programs
• Education and training programs
APRI has influenced innumerable elections crucial to the Black-Labor Alliance.
We have registered and brought to the polls millions of black voters across the nation, working in virtually every city with a sizable black population.
Other APRI success stories include:
• In 1990, APRI members helped the United Food and Commercial Workers gain a fair contract for the predominantly black and female workforce at the Delta Pride catfish plant in Mississippi by building black community support for these union workers' struggle
• In the 1980's, APRI helped deny federal funds to discriminatory institutions by lobbying to override President Reagan's veto of civil rights legislation APRI also helped successfully lobby to renew and strengthen the Voting Rights Act and to establish the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday

To A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin,
APRl's co-founders, the fight for workers' rights and civil rights were inseparable.
Randolph (1889-1979) was the greatest black labor leader in American history and the father of the modern American civil rights movement. Rustin (1912-1987), a leading civil rights and labor activist and strategist, was the chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Randolph's greatest protege.

Randolph and Rustin forged an alliance between the civil rights movement and the labor movement. They recognized that blacks and working people of all colors share the same goals: political and social freedom and economic justice.

This Black-Labor Alliance helped the civil rights movement achieve one of its greatest victories - passage of the Voting Rights Act, which removed the last remaining legal harriers to broad black political participation.

Inspired by this success, Randolph and Rustin founded APRI in 1968 to continue the struggle for social, political and economic justice for all working Americans.