Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class : NPR

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Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class

Morning Edition , May 7, 2009 · Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman porters — that distinctive and distinguished figure from yesteryear — the uniformed African-American train worker, who forged his way into the middle class.

As part of this year's National Train Day celebration on Saturday, Amtrak is honoring the legacy of Pullman porters in Philadelphia. The porters served first-class passengers traveling in the luxurious Pullman sleeping cars, and the safe, steady work that allowed tens of thousands of African-Americans access to middle-class life.

The legacy of Pullman porters is complex, author Larry Tye tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.

George Pullman, the entrepreneur who invented the sleeping car and began hiring porters for them in 1868, "was looking for people who had been trained to be the perfect servant, and these guys' backgrounds [were] as having been chattel slaves. He knew that they knew just how to take care of any whim that a customer had."

Tye, who wrote Rising from the Rails: The Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, says Pullman "knew they would come cheap, and he paid them next to nothing. And he knew that there was never a question off the train that you would be embarrassed by running into one of these Pullman porters and having them remember something you did that you didn't want your wife or husband, perhaps, to remember during that long trip."

Over time, the porters were able to combine their meager salaries with tips. They saved and put their children and grandchildren through college, which helped them attain middle-class status.

After decades of discrimination and abuse, the porters eventually organized in 1925 and became the first ...

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