“We have organized, marched, participated in sit-ins and wade-ins, and gotten ourselves arrested,” recounts civil rights heroes Norman Hill and Velma Murphy Hill.
<p>"More than a year into a national reckoning over racism, two heroes in the struggle for racial justice have received little national attention. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin were mentor and student, friends and colleagues—eventually, their relationship was like father and son."</p>
A Vision of Racial and Economic Justice
A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin knew the fate of the civil rights and labor movements were intertwined. The same is true today. Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and John Morsell hold a press conference in 1963. (Library of Congress)
Norman Hill and Velma Murphy Hill began their careers in the civil rights movement in the late 1950s in Chicago, where they met and married. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin acted as their mentors through every major event in the fight for civil rights. Below, the Hills reflect on the organizing principles that drove their mentors’ activism and struggle.Â