The Pullman porter was once one of America's most familiar and ubiquitous figures. His gentle smile and willingness to please rail travelers, however, belied the pain that lay behind that welcoming countenance.
It was a protracted labor struggle that eventually led A. Philip Randolph to form the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black labor union with an international charter from the American Federation of Labor in 1925. It was a move that would form the basis of the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.
"Pullman porters lived and worked in an era of American history that stretches from the Civil War to the conflict in Vietnam," wrote Jack Santino in his 1989 book, "Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: Stories of Black Pullman Porters."
"As black workers serving a rich white clientele, they came to symbolize a golden age of rail transportation. In the 1920s, while images in books, movies, and popular songs were defining them as grinning, shuffling servants, Pullman porters organized what would become this country's first successful black labor union.
"[P]orters withstood physical abuse, job insecurity, intimidation, and brute force to triumphantly assert their essential dignity and to claim their rights as human beings."
"The lowly humble African American sleeping car porter perfected four-star service and the art of hospitality, and the service they provided made Pullman rich," says former porter Donald Hughes of Columbia. Also the son of a Pullman porter, he worked from 1975 to 1978 aboard the Pullmans of the Southern Railroad's crack Crescent Limited.
"I rode on the coattails of those old-time porters. By my time, there was respect between the passengers and porters.
"However," laments Hughes, "young people today need to know what they endured and it is a legacy that I want to help pass along."
Today, Hughes will join other veteran Pullman porters, dining car personnel and other railroaders at 3 p.m. at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, to talk about their various careers.
Author Santino saw the porter's role this way:
"To whites, porters represented service and luxury; to blacks, he represented status and mobility, both physical and social. One porter phrases it this way: `I used to wave at the white-suited porters when the train ran through, and I left South Carolina to get one of those jobs. Neckties were mandatory, and you have to understand, blacks were elated to get out of denims.' Denims were field clothes, work clothes that reminded the men of slavery; the clean, crisp uniforms of the Pullman porters were seen as genuine status symbols, a major advance."
