Randolph T. Blackwell (March 10, 1927 – May 21, 1981) was an American activist of the Civil Rights Movement, serving in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, amongst other organizations.

As a student in sociology at North Carolina A & T University (from which he graduated in 1949) he made an unsuccessful run for the state assembly.

[2][3] In March 1963, while attempting to register black voters in Greenwood, Mississippi with Bob Moses and Jimmy Travis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the car they were driving was fired on.

Blackwell and Moses escaped injury but Travis was shot and hospitalized;[5] the shooting brought national media attention to the struggle in the south, energized the civil rights movement, and forced the Kennedy administration to investigate.

[1][2][3][7][8] From 1977 to 1979, in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Blackwell was director of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in the U.S. Department of Commerce,[2][3] but was beset there by charges of mismanagement.