For example, in 1941 the labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph proposed a march on Washington, D.C., by 100,000 African American men to pressure the United States government into establishing protections against discrimination. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to persuade Randolph to call off the march, worried it would harm defense mobilization, but Randolph refused. Roosevelt subsequently issued Executive Order 8802, which established the Fair Employment Practices Committee and banned discrimination in defense contracts. The march was called off. Historian Andrew E. Kersten has called Randolph's March on Washington "the most significant nonevent in American history."