Located at the intersection of 7 Avenue, St Nicholas Avenue and West 117 Street, A Philip Randolph Square is a neighbourhood park that is more of a triangle than a square.
This shaded area north of Central Park, in Harlem, Manhattan is named after labor and civil rights movement leader A. Philip Randolph.
Who was A. Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph was a civil rights and labour union activist who lived from 1889 to 1979. Born in Crescent City, Florida, Randolph completed his education at the Cookman Institute in Jacksonville before enrolling in City College of New York in 1911.
Together wth Chandler Owen, Randolph founded The Messenger in 1917, a radical monthly publication that pushed Black industrial workers to form unions.
He established a union for the Pullman Railroad Company’s sleeping-car porters in 1925. After ten years of discussions, the Pullman Company’s executives finally agreed to Randolph’s demands and recognised the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first black union, granting them $2 million in pay raises.
With Bayard Rustin, he was in charge of organising the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) gave his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech.
The A. Philip Randolph Institute was established in 1965 to improve ties between labour, political, and civil rights organisations. Randolph passed away in 1979 and his ashes rest at the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
What’s at A. Philip Randolph Square?
The small A. Philip Randolph Square has some seating areas and benches under the shade of mature trees.
The plaza’s ground has sections that have been paved over but there are still patches of grass where it is possible to sit down under the shade of the tree. It acts as a little rest area for those who may want to get outdoors for a while.
The site was originally purchased by the city in 1896 for the purpose of constructing a park. It once housed one of the numerous brownstone milestone markers that indicated how far away various locations were from City Hall.
What is interesting to know that the square has gone through several re-namings.
It originally opened as the Judson Kilpatrick Memorial Square in 1908, named for the Union general. Then, in 1922, it was renamed for Admiral George B. Dewey, a naval hero in the Spanish-American War.
In 1964, the square underwent another renaming, this time to honour Asa Philip Randolph.
Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, who lived nearby at the time when it was called Dewey Square, also found inspiration in the little triangular plot of land and used it as the name of a song he wrote in 1947. So, now you know that if you are looking for Dewey Square, it is now known as A. Philip Randolph Square.
