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July 22, 2004
Forgotten history
An important part of the African American experience had fallen
unceremoniously into the forgotten archives of history. However,
Larry Tye, the author and former Boston Globe reporter, rescued
the social history of the Pullman Porters from oblivion in his
recently published book, “Rising From The Rails.”
Blacks under the age of 40 have no personal memory of Pullman
Porters because the Pullman Company had terminated its sleeping
car service in 1969. And for at least a decade earlier Pullman
had contracted its service as the commercial airlines encroached
on its market. But there was a time when Pullman was king.
George Pullman began designing more comfortable and luxurious
railroad cars at about the same time that Abraham Lincoln freed
the slaves. There were others who recognized the necessity of
improving upon the standard, uncomfortable railroad coach, but
they lacked the marketing genius of Pullman.
Pullman designed his cars for the more affluent who, because of
their wealth, were accustomed to service. What group was better
equipped to provide such service than the recently freed slaves
who had been reared in servility and were currently unemployed.
No social benefactor, Pullman also realized that he could hire
freed slaves for less than he would have to pay whites. It was
company policy that all porters and waiters must be blacks but
conductors are to be white.
While he did not invent the term “porter,” George
Pullman’s porters “set a standard for the hospitality
industry. They came to define the vocation of railroad attendant
and, for most Americans, made porter synonymous with Negro.”
By 1895 Pullman had 2,556 sleeping cars rolling over 126,660 miles
of American track. On a given night, at the peak of the railroad
traffic, 100,000 people would be accommodated in Pullman sleepers.
This was more than all the nation’s top-level hotels combined,
according to Tye.
During the 1920s, the Pullman Company was the largest employer
of African American men. The job of sleeping car porters was much
sought after because of the tips that could be earned. Their numbers
included such illustrious men as Thurgood Marshall, Benjamin Mays,
former president of Morehouse College, and Roy Wilkins, former
national head of the NAACP. A porter who died in a 1923 crash
was a 1922 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College.
The Pullman Company was enormously successful. Stockholders earned
$187,880,000 in cash dividends and stock value between 1898 and
1910. Yet porters had to work long hours without sleep, pay for
expensive layovers and earned low pay while responsibilities increased.
Porters were expected to make up for their low salary by earning
tips. College educated blacks, unable to find employment elsewhere,
were forced to assume a subservient manner as porters in order
to support their families.
Those porters who lacked a formal education found that traveling
across the country was a broadening experience. They were also
able to transport pamphlets, newspapers and books to black communities
in their travels.
One of the working conditions that was most intolerable was that
conductors, who were always white and were porters’ supervisors,
received three times their salary, and their duties were minimal.
When the porters decided to form a union they chose A. Philip
Randolph to head it because he was not a porter and would therefore
not suffer reprisals.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded in August
of 1925 but it took 12 years to get its first contract with the
Pullman Company. The Brotherhood became the first official black
trade union in America.
Although Tye’s research is meticulous, the quality of his
writing makes ‘Rising From The Rails’ read like a
novel. This book is required reading for those interested in the
development of the black middle-class.
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