What heartens students of the era is the legacy they left. Tye argues that many of the brightest, most resourceful African-American men of their time - from filmmaker Oscar Micheaux to Malcolm X, who sold sandwiches on trains in the 1940s - worked as or alongside Pullman porters. And they bequeathed to later generations a strong work ethic and a profound sense of self-worth.
"An extraordinary number of the black professional class are their offspring," Tye says.
And then there are the stories. If Hughes closes his eyes, he can summon memories of every station from New York on south - from Philadelphia through Charlottesville, Va., from Salisbury, N.C., to Birmingham, Ala., and right on into the Crescent City, where he enjoyed the occasional jaw-dropping night on Bourbon Street.
