The march was first planned by A. Philip Randolph, who was the president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO. He had planned another civil rights march in 1941, but it never happened. However, the threat of the march was a big reason why President Roosevelt wrote Executive Order 8802. This forced equal opportunity in the defense industry, which meant that all workers had to be treated the same, no matter what their race was.