A. Philip Randolph at the 1967 Debs Dinner
He "was poor in the things of this world, but rich in the things of the spirit," Randolph says of Debs in these previously unpublished remarks.
I’d like to apologize for my long silence; daily work and personal life have gotten the best of me in recent months, and I haven’t been able to put anything up on Debs Dispatch for some time. Thanks to all of you for your continued support and readership.
Today, I have a treat: A. Philip Randolph’s reflections on Debs upon receiving the 1967 Eugene V. Debs Award (given every year by the Debs Foundation). To my knowledge it’s never been published before, including in any Randolph biographies. I obtained a copy, thanks to researcher John Morahn, from the Debs Foundation.
[Eugene Debs] was one of the prophets of the world, sometimes referred to as the lionhearted agitator. Debs was a crusader of the poor, the oppressed, and downtrodden workers, with a passionate dedication to peace, social and racial justice, and profound orientations to Christian, democratic socialism, as against materialist Marxism [Ed: Randolph’s anti-Communism arguably distorted his view here — Debs wasn’t an orthodox Marxist, but he certainly was a Marxist], Debs went up and down the country calling the masses to awake, organize, and fight for freedom, peace, and plenty.
Realizing that the workers on the picket line, with their leaders at the collective bargaining table, needed labor’s power at the ballot box, in the 1912 presidential election he, as the standard-bearer of the Socialist Party, polled 901,839 votes, nearly a million. But he was ever conscious of the fact that the ballot alone could not emancipate the working class, and so he organized railroad workers in probably the first industrial union and led the great Pullman Strike of 1894. Though the strike was lost, he fired the hearts of American workers with a fighting faith in freedom and fortitude.
As a great champion for peace, he opposed the First World War and was sent to the Atlanta Penitentiary and pardoned by President [Warren G. Harding]. Debs came upon the stage of American history when labor and capital were locked in ceaseless warfare in such struggles as the Haymarket massacre, the Populist movement, the farmers uprisings. Mark Twain called this period the Gilded Age, or the time of the industrial tycoons.
Let us here today drink of the refreshing waters of the democratic spirit of Debs, the colossal and dynamic spirit of the workers of America and the world. Debs reflected in his big heart the social conscience of idealism and humanism which envisioned freedom from want and freedom from hate — racial, religious, or national. If Debs were here today, he would be marching for civil rights.
I had the pleasure and inspiration of having known the great Debs. He campaigned in Harlem to elect my lovely wife, now departed, to the New York Legislature on the Socialist ticket. Debs was a holy warrior for, and guardian of the life and labor, of the forgotten man, the humble laborer. Being a gentle, lovable, gracious, and kindly man, he won the hearts of Negro prisoners in the Atlanta prison with him.
His lanky, Lincoln-esque, bony frame, his meekness and humility, gave him the image of an ancient prophet, wholly without guile or a sense of power or pride in the brilliance of his distinguished life and labor. He was poor in the things of this world, but rich in the things of the spirit.
May his memory ever live in the book and memory of numberless oppressed toilers of this earth and inspire us to march forward to a world of social and racial justice, freedom and equality, peace and plenty, a warless world without racism, black or white, brown or yellow, in which all men are recognized as members of one common human family, with respect for the dignity and worth of their personality. Such was the dream of Eugene V. Debs.