By Don Valentine
Pullman Porters/Brotherhood for Sleeping Car Porters ushered in the origin of the Black Middle Class. According to the History Channel, “The first Pullman porter began working aboard the sleeper cars around 1867, and quickly became a fixture of the company’s sought-after traveling experience…Pullman recruited only Black men, many of them former slave states, to work as porters. Their job was to lug baggage, shine shoes, set up and clean the sleeping berths…” George Pullman, the founder, sold fully pampered travel perfection to the White passengers.
The Civil war had just ended and it was a clever use of the ultimate vocational training for grooming and pampering. A lifetime of servitude, and boot licking a slave master, made you the ultimate candidate for a porter. Smithsonian Magazine historian Larry Tye wrote, “The saying went, ‘Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and George Pullman hired ‘em.’ ” It was no surprise that the job came with a substantial endurance of “Yassa boss, Right away boss!” Pullman Porters were nameless. Instead they were called “Boy” or “George.” That was a flashback to plantation life, when slaves were named after their owners. What made this abuse so coveted and admired in our community was that it was a paid job. The position came with perks other Blacks only dreamed about. The History Channel noted, “many former Porters moved on to jobs at fine hotels and restaurants, and some even moved up to the White House. Porter J.W. Mays first served President William McKinley in his sleeping car; he would later spend more than four decades in the White House, serving McKinley and the eight presidents who followed him.” Pullman Porters were well-traveled and rubbed shoulders with America’s elites like William Hearst, Vanderbilt and the Deering. All of the Gilded age barons used the services of Pullman Porters.
Pullman Porters would travel across the country and be immersed in sights, texture, culture and nuances that most Blacks could not even dream about. Pullman Porters became the paragon of a nascent Black middle class. It was never an exorbitant wage, and they paid for their uniforms, paid for their own food, did unpaid prep work. It was the often generous tips from the patrons that made the Porters financially comfortable. The base wage made a nominal increase in 1925, with the creation of the Porter’s union: “The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.” A. Philip Randolph, a Black labor rights advocate, was the leader of the effort to unionize.
Porters saved their money, started small local businesses and sent their children off to University. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman Porters. This list also includes Whoopie Goldberg, Tom Joyner, actress Taraji P. Henson. In addition were famous past Porters, Malcolm X and the photojournalist Gordon Parks. By 1969 Airline travel was the end of Porter sleeping car service. The indelible motto of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters was, “Fight or Be Slaves!”
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