Pullman porter

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 ended in 1865 Pullman knew that there was a large pool of former slaves who would be looking for work; he also had a very clear racial conception. He was aware that most Americans, unlike the wealthy, did not have personal servants in their homes. Pullman also knew 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 the American middle class had never experienced. Hence, part of the appeal of traveling on sleeping cars was, in a sense, to have an upper class experience. From the start, Pullman's ads promoting his new sleeper service featured these porters. 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 (railway station porters). Porters were not paid a livable wage and needed to rely on tips to earn enough to make a living. Walter Biggs, son of a Pullman porter, spoke of memories of being a Pullman porter as told to him by his father: The number of porters employed by railroads declined as sleeping car service dwindled in the 1960s as passenger numbers dwindled due to competition from auto and air travel, and sleeping car services were discontinued on many trains. By 1969, the ranks of the Pullman sleeping car porters had declined to 325 men with an average age of 63. ==Duties and wages==

parlor car, circa 1910. A porter was expected to greet passengers, carry baggage, make up the sleeping berths, serve food and drinks brought from the dining car, shine shoes, and keep the cars tidy. He needed to be available night and day to wait on the passengers. He was expected to always smile; thus the porters often called the job, ironically, "miles of smiles". 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 thought of the porters as a piece of equipment, just like another button on a panelthe 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 sleepand that was deducted from their pay. A 1926 report by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (which finally achieved recognition by the Pullman Company in 1937), using the results of a survey by the Labor Bureau, Inc., stated that the minimum monthly wage for a regular porter was $72.50 (), with the average being $78.11, and tips on average amounting to $58.15; however, porters had to pay for their own meals, lodging, uniforms, and shoe-shine supplies, amounting to an average of $33.82 a month. Overtime pay of 60 cents per 100 miles was paid only for monthly service in excess of 11,000 miles, or about 400 hours of road service in a month. Maids received a minimum of $70 a month, with the same overtime provision, but they received fewer tips. By contrast, Pullman conductors, who already had a recognized union to bargain for them, earned a minimum $150 a month for 240 hours' work. The company offered a health, disability, and life insurance plan for $28 a year, and paid a pension of $18 a month to porters who reached age 70 and had at least 20 years of service. The BSCP booklet also reports that in 1925 the Pullman Company paid out over $10 million in dividends to stockholders from an aggregate net company income of more than $19 million. "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, founder of the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum. The porters were expected to pay for their own meals and uniforms and the company required them to pay for the 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==

, 1943 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 that 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 that they had done during their trip that they did not want their wife or husband, perhaps, to know about. In a weekly series of articles entitled "Reflections on Black History", he wrote of the contradictions in the life of a Pullman porter: In 2008, Amtrak became aware of The Pullman Porters National Historic Registry of African American Railroad Employees, a five-year research project conducted by Dr. Lyn Hughes, for the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, and published in 2007. Amtrak enlisted the APR Pullman Porter Museum, and partnered with them using the registry to locate and honor surviving porters through a series of regional ceremonies. Amtrak also attempted to locate additional survivors in order to interview them for a promotional project. A few remaining living former Pullman porters were found, all of whom were in their 90s or over 100 years old at that time. The project coordinator remarked, "Even today, observers are struck by how elegant the elderly men are. When we find them, they are dapper. They are men, even at this age, who wear suits and ties." ==Unionization==

sleeping car, on display in Duluth, Minnesota As early as 1900, Porters started to rally and organize for better wages and treatment. Porters who worked an average of 300-400 hours per month, were paid a fixed monthly wage regardless of hours or length of trips. They were also subjected to easy dismissal or termination based on minor or false accusations by mainly white passengers. Initial efforts were largely unsuccessful and also increased risk of retributory termination for attempting to unionize. because the order did not admit Black people, A. Philip Randolph began organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. 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 Randolph's leadership the first black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was formed and slowly working conditions and salaries improved. By forming the first black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Pullman porters also laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement, which began in the 1950s. Union organizer and former Pullman porter E. D. Nixon played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in 1955. It was he who bailed Rosa Parks out of jail after she refused to move on the bus, and who selected her as the figure to build the boycott around. ==Contribution to a black middle class==

The black community looked up to Pullman porters and many people credit them as significant contributors to the development of America's black middle class. Black historian and civil-rights activist Timuel Black observed in a 2013 interview: In the late 19th century, Pullman porters were among the only people in their communities to travel extensively. Consequently, they became a conduit of new information and ideas from the wider world to their communities. Many Pullman porters supported community projects, including schools, and saved rigorously 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. Berkeley, California Councilman, U.S. Congressman, and Oakland, California Mayor Ron Dellums was also a descendant of Pullman porters. His father was Verney Dellums, a Pullman porter and a longshoreman. His uncle, C.L. Dellums, was a leader in the Brotherhood of Pullman Car Porters union. Ron Dellums served fourteen terms as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. ==A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum==

In 1995, Lyn Hughes founded the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum to celebrate both the life of A. Philip Randolph and the role of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and other African-Americans in the U.S. labor movement. Located in South Side, Chicago and housed in one of the original rowhouses built by George Pullman to house workers, it is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Pullman National Historic Landmark District. The museum houses a collection of artifacts and documents related to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Additionally, in 2001, the museum began compiling a national registry of black railroad employees who worked for the railroad from the late 1800s to 1969. On March 29, 2025, the museum broke ground at an adjacent rowhouse for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Ladies Auxiliary Women's History Museum. It recognizes the efforts of women such as Rosina Corrothers Tucker, the wife of a porter, who was able to organize for the union more freely than the porters themselves. She founded and became president of the Brotherhood's International Ladies' Auxiliary Order, also known as the Women's Economic Councils. ==Recognition==

In 2008, Amtrak, in partnership with the A. Philip Randolph Museum, honored Pullman porters in Chicago. Museum founder Lyn Hughes spoke at the event saying, "It's significant when an organization like Amtrak takes the time to honor those who contributed directly to its own history. It's also very appropriate as it's the culmination of the effort to create the Pullman Porter Registry. We started the Registry with Amtrak and now we're coming full circle with its completion and the honoring of these great African American men." Hughes is also author of An Anthology of Respect: The Pullman Porter National Historic Registry. In 2009, as part of Black History Month, Amtrak honored Pullman porters in Oakland, California. An AARP journalist writes, "They were dignified men who did undignified labor. They made beds and cleaned toilets. They shined shoes, dusted jackets, cooked meals and washed dishes in cramped and rolling quarters." Amtrak invited five retired members of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to speak at the event. The eldest of the five, Lee Gibson, age 98, spoke of his journey to the event (by rail) saying, "It was nice. I got the service I used to give." He spoke of his years as porter with fondness saying, It was a wonderful life." In 2009 Philadelphia honored about 20 of the 200 former Pullman employees who were still alive at that time as part of National Train Day. Speaking to Michele Norris of NPR, former cook and porter Frank Rollins, 93, said "the railway wanted Southern boys to run the dining cars because 'they thought they had a certain personality and a certain demeanor that satisfied the Southern passengers better than the boys who came from Chicago.'" Rollins also spoke of the racist comments that black men experienced but commented on positive experiences as well. He recalled, "I used to have a little speech that I'd make. I would walk into the car, and I would say, 'May I have your attention please. My name is Frank Rollins. If you can't remember that, that's OK. You can call me porterit's right here on the cap, you can be able to remember that. Just don't call me 'boy' and don't call me George. In August 2013, the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (also known as "The Great March on Washington"), one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history. Interviewed in a neighborhood newspaper, founder Lyn Hughes suggested that some people in the Chicago area may prefer to celebrate the anniversary of the march in their own community rather than travel to Washington. She added that many people are unaware that Asa Philip Randolph was the initial activist who inspired the March on Washington Movement. Scheduled activities included speakers and screenings of films related to black labor history. Two organizers said that two former Pullman porters, Milton Jones (age 98) and Benjamin Gaines (age 90), were expected to attend. ==Notable Pullman porters==

• Joel Augustus Rogers (1880-1966) • Big Bill Broonzy • George W. Griffin, whose award following a successful lawsuit was reduced by a racist ruling in Griffin v. Brady • Nat Love • Oscar Micheaux • E. D. Nixon • Mancel Warrick, father of Dionne Warwick ==See also==