Pullman porter
Pullman porters were men hired by George Pullman to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. Pullman porters served American railroads for 100 years from the late 1860s until the late 1960s.
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History[edit]
Prior to the 1860s the concept of sleeping cars on railroads had not been widely developed. George Pullman pioneered sleeping accommodations on trains and by the late 1860s he was hiring only African-Americans to serve as porters. After the Civil War Pullman knew that there was a large pool of former slaves who would be looking for work, and he also had a very clear racial conception. He was aware that most Americans, unlike the wealthy, didn’t have personal servants in their homes. Pullman knew that the wealthy were accustomed to being served by a liveried waiter or butler, but to staff the Pullman cars with "properly humble" workers in uniform was something that the American middle class had never experienced. Hence, part of the appeal to traveling on sleeping cars was, in a sense, to experience an upper-class experience. From the very start porters were featured in Pullman's ads promoting his new sleeper service. Initially they were one of the features that most clearly distinguished his carriages from those of competitors, but eventually nearly all would follow his lead, hiring African-Americans as porters, cooks, waiters and Red Caps.[1]
While the pay was very low by the standards of the day, in an era of significant racial prejudice, being a Pullman porter was one of the best jobs available for African American men. Thus, for black men, while this was an opportunity, at the same time it was also an experience of being stereotyped as the servant class and having to take a lot of abuse. Many passengers called every porter “George,” as if he were George Pullman’s “boy”, a practice that was born in the South where slaves were named after their slavemasters, or in this case porters being seen as servants of George Pullman. The only ones who protested were other men named George, who founded the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters George, or
SPCSCPG, which eventually claimed 31,000 members. [1] Although the SPCSCPG was more interested in defending the dignity of its white members than in achieving any measure of racial justice, it nevertheless had some effects for all porters. In 1926 the SPCSCPG persuaded the Pullman Company to install small racks in each car, displaying a card with the given name of the porter on duty. Of the 12,000 porters and waiters then working for Pullman, only 362 turned out to be named George.
Stanley G. Grizzle, a former Canadian porter, titled his autobiography, My Name's Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
However, Walter Biggs, son of a Pullman porter, spoke of more pleasant memories as told to him by his father:
"One of the most remarkable stories I liked hearing about was how when Jackie Gleason would ride ... all the porters wanted to be on that run. The reason why? Not only because he gave every porter $100.00, but it was just the fun, the excitement, the respect that he gave the porters. Instead of their names being George, he called everybody by their first name. He always had like a piano in the car and they sang and danced and had a great time. He was just a fun person to be around."[2]
Duties[edit]
A porter was expected to greet passengers, carry baggage, make up the sleeping berths, serve food and drinks, shine shoes, and keep the cars tidy. He needed to be available night and day to wait on the passengers. They were expected to always smile, thus the porters often called the job, ironically, “miles of smiles.”[3]
It is not widely known that in the early 1900s, the heyday of luxury travel, the more luxurious trains also had African-American Pullman maids to care for women's needs, especially women with children. They were expected to assist ladies with their bath, be able to give manicures and dress hair, and assist with children. [4] [5]
According to historian Greg LeRoy, "A Pullman Porter was really kind of a glorified hotel maid and bellhop in what Pullman called a hotel on wheels. The Pullman Company just thought of the porters as a piece of equipment, just like another button on a panel - the same as a light switch or a fan switch." Porters worked 400 hours a month or 11,000 miles, sometimes as much as 20 hours at a stretch. They were expected to arrive at work several hours early to prepare their car, on their own time; they were charged whenever their passengers stole a towel or a water pitcher. On overnight trips, they were allocated only three to four hours of sleep -- and that was deducted from their pay. "It didn't pay a livable wage, but they made a living with the tips that they got, because the salary was nothing, " says Lyn Hughes of the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum. The company expected its employees to pay for their own meals, supply their own uniforms and shoe polish used to shine passengers shoes daily. There was little job security and the Pullman Company inspectors were known for suspending porters for trivial reasons.
Characterization[edit]
Historian Timuel Black recounts Pullman porters saying, "They were good looking, clean and immaculate in their dress, their style was quite manly, their language was very carefully crafted, so that they had a sense of intelligence about them ... they were good role models for young men." [2]
According to Larry Tye, who authored Rising from the Rails: The Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, George Pullman was aware that as former chattel slaves, the men he hired had already received the perfect training and "knew just how to take care of any whim that a customer had." Tye further explained that Pullman was aware that there was never a question that a traveler would be embarrassed by running into one of the porters and having them remember something they had done during their trip that they didn't want their wife or husband, perhaps, to know about.[6]
Black historian and journalist Thomas Fleming began his career as a bellhop and then spent five years as a cook for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Fleming was the co-founder and executive editor of Northern California's largest weekly African-American newspaper. In a weekly series of articles entitled, "Reflections on Black History", he wrote of the contradictions in the life of a Pullman porter:
"Pullman went on to become the biggest single employer of blacks in America, and the job of Pullman porter was, for most of the 101-year history of the Pullman Company, one of the very best a black man could aspire to, in status and eventually in pay. The porter reigned supreme on George's sleeper cars. But the very definition of their jobs, of their kingdom, roiled in contradictions. The porter was servant as well as host. He had the best job in his community and the worst on the train. He could be trusted with his white passengers' children and their safety, but only for the five days of a cross-country trip. He shared his riders' most private moments but, to most, remained an enigma if not an enemy."[7]
Unionization[edit]
Using the motto "Fight or Be Slaves", on August 25, 1925, 500 porters met in Harlem and decided to make an effort to organize. Under the leadership of the A. Philip Randolph, the first black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was formed and slowly but eventually, working conditions and salaries improved.
By the 1960s between the decline of the passenger rail system and the cultural shifts in American society, the contribution of the Pullman porters became obscured, becoming for some in the African American community a symbol of subservience to cultural and economic domination.[6] In 1969, the Pullman Company went out of business and the railroads stopped the practice of hiring only black men as porters. In 1978, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters ceased to exist as a separate organization and merged with the larger Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks.
Contribution to a black middle class[edit]
Pullman porters are credited by many people as contributing to the development of the black middle class in America. In the late 19th century they were among the only people in their communities to travel extensively. As a result they became a conduit of new information and ideas from the wider world to their communities. Many Pullman porters saved rigorously in order to ensure that their children were able to obtain an education and thus better employment. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman porters.[6]
A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum[edit]
The A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum was established in Chicago in 1995 to celebrate both the life of A. Philip Randolph and the role of African Americans in the U.S. labor movement. [8]
Notable Pullman porters[edit]
See also[edit]
- Sleeping Car
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - The first African-American trade union
- Pullman Strike
- Pullman Company
- The Road Taken - A documentary about Black railway porters in Canada
- Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle - A documentary about the organization of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Gandy dancer
- Pullman loaf - A type of long, square bread developed to be baked in the small kitchens of rail cars
- Pullman train (UK)
References[edit]
- ^ a b Choosing Servility To Staff America's Trains | Alicia Patterson Foundation
- ^ a b Pullman Porters, The: From Servitude to Civil Rights - WTTW
- ^ Miles of Smiles - About Pullman Porters - Paul Wagner Films
- ^ Tye, Larry. "Interview with Larry Tye". Npr.org. Retrieved 2011-11-09.
- ^ The African-American Railroad Experience | KPBS.org
- ^ a b c Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class : NPR
- ^ Reflections on Black History
- ^ "A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum". Retrieved 2009-03-09.
