Heritage: the untold story Published Feb. 23, 2012 By Col. David Coley 60th Maintenance Group commander TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Last week, I highlighted two lesser-known African-American historical figures. This week, I will conclude the second part of my commentary with two more historical figures. A. Philip Randolph Raised in abolitionist traditions by his minister father, A. Philip Randolph mirrored those beliefs for more than 60 years as a champion of equal rights. He came to national prominence by organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and achieved the first union contract signed by a white employer and an African-American labor leader. In 1941 he conceived a march on Washington, DC, to protest exclusion of African-American workers from defense jobs. Faced with the public relations threat of 100,000 marchers, President Franklin Roosevelt established the wartime Fair Employment Practice Committee. Randolph founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation, which in 1948 pressured President Harry Truman into ending segregation in the armed forces. Although in later years he became less militant, Randolph was a dedicated socialist from his college days in New York. His lifelong belief in unionism and integration flowed from that philosophy, and he went into action in 1917 by co-founding The Messenger, a weekly magazine of African-American protest, and lecturing across the country. For his outspoken leadership, Randolph's opponents characterized him as "the most dangerous Negro in America" because of his proven power to create change. He was still the acknowledged patriarch into the early 1970s and into his 80s, after his key role in organizing the historic, 250,000 strong March on Washington in 1963. Fannie Lou Hamer Fannie Lou Hamer was born October 6, 1917 in the Mississippi Delta. Inspired by the fighting spirit of her mother, Fannie Lou Hamer became widely known as the "Spirit" of the Civil Rights movement. In the early 1960's a black man or woman could lose their life trying to register to vote in some towns in Mississippi. But even at the risk of her life, Fannie Lou Hamer registered to vote. Because she encouraged others to do so, Fannie Lou Hamer was evicted from the farm where she lived and her husband was fired. Although neither her husband nor Fannie Lou could find work, they continued to organize people to register to vote. She helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which went to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation. Because of these efforts an integrated delegation was eventually seated in 1968. Fannie Lou Hamer also organized cooperatives to fight hunger and joblessness. The cooperative movement allowed blacks to leave the plantations where they were sharecroppers and set up their own farms in a cooperative manner where they profited from the farms together.