…so Pullman porters unionized In 1925, a group of porters decided they’d had enough. They went to A. Philip Randolph, a prominent labor rights advocate, and asked him to help them form a union.

On his first day of work on a passenger train in 1943, James Smith didn't get a chance to drink in the landscape on the run from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore. He was deep inside the galley of the ...

In his nine years as a Pullman porter, Benjamin Gaines waited on high society types as they traveled across the country aboard luxury rail cars. Gaines, who moved to Chicago in 1945, washed dishes ...

Pullman Porters Helped Others Reach Their Destination. February 26, 2008. By David Montgomery. So much cultural meaning is packed into the figure of the Pullman porter -- racial pride and racial ...

Pullman Porters are seen in these historic photos (from left to right): 1. J.W. Mays, a Pullman porter, from 1894-1900. 2. Pullman porters receive reservation diagrams for their trains through ...

Since the Pullman Company began employing Black men — many former slaves — as porters to wait on passengers in 1867, they were simply called “George” as a derogatory acknowledgment that ...

Pullman porters wore many hats. In a collection of essays that chronicles the development of the Black Press, “The African American Newspaper: Voices of Freedom” by Patrick S. Washburn, ...

The Pullman porters laid the seeds of civil rights activism through their labor struggle. A. Philip Randolph led the efforts to unionize. Chicago Stories is available to stream on pbs.org and the ...

In Pullman, a mural created this year aims to capture the history of the Pullman porters.. Artist Joe Nelson, who goes by CUJODAH, worked with Union Pacific Railroad and the National Park ...

The Pullman porters worked on the transcontinental railroads in the US and Canada after WWI. It was one of the very few opportunities in that segregated era for Black men to have well-paying jobs ...