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Fresh Air from WHYY, June 30, 2004
Journalist Larry Tye examines the social history of the porter in Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. Tye says that the job was one of the best for African Americans at the time, and that it was a foothold in the American workplace. Tye reports for The Boston Globe.
from the film's site
About Pullman Porters
Rising from near-servitude in the years following the Civil War, Pullman Porters became the backbone of the rail industry and ambassadors of culture between the worlds of privileged whites and the black community. The era of the Pullman Porters, which begins at the abolition of slavery and ends when Pullman ceased its sleeping car service in 1969, encapsulates the evolution of African-Americans from post-slavery disenfranchisement to full participation in the social, economic and political fabric of America.
Just after the Civil War, George Pullman began recruiting black men as porters on his new luxurious rail cars. They were hired not merely because of their strong work ethic and disarming dispositions, but because they epitomized Pullman's vision of safe, reliable, and invisible servants. For over a century, in the intimate confines of railcars that traversed the nation, the Pullman Porter served as waiter, nanny, valet, concierge, and occasionally confidant to well-heeled white passengers. He also endured grueling workloads, daily indignities, and outright humiliations with a duty-bound smile that belied his strength and determination.
With steady jobs and worldly views, Pullman Porters enjoyed a different reputation in black communities. They were respected as stalwarts of the economy and emissaries of news, culture, and ideas from the outside world. They became trailblazers in the struggle for African American dignity and self-sufficiency, patriarchs of black labor unions, and helped give birth to the Civil Rights Movement.
About the Film
Based on the best-selling book by Larry Tye, Rising from the Rails: The Story of the Pullman Porter chronicles the relatively unheralded Pullman Porters, generations of African American men who served as caretakers to wealthy white passengers on luxury trains that traversed the nation in the golden age of rail travel. Unbeknownst to most of their white passengers, porters played critical political and cultural roles; bringing elements of white culture to black communities, helping spread jazz and the blues from cities to rural communities, and bringing news, organizing skills, and seditious ideas about freedom from the urban North to the segregated South. Pullman Porters became trailblazers in the struggle for African American dignity and self-sufficiency, became patriarchs of black labor unions, and helped give birth to the Civil Rights Movement. Ultimately, however, their greatest legacy is that which they left to future generations—strong ethics, self-respect, and a deep value for education, embodied in their children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, who now number among the most successful black political and business leaders, athletes, entertainers, civic leaders, jurists, doctors, and other members of the black middle and professional classes in America. Rising from the Rails pays tribute to these men who rose—with dignity—from the rails.
In addition to the former porters interviewed, surviving family members remember other porters who have sadly passed away. Also interviewed are experts such as Larry Tye, author of Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, William F. Howes, Jr., a former director of the Pullman Company, author, and recognized expert on passenger rail transportation, and Dr, Juliet E.K. Walker, Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, and an expert on black business history.
This film covers the 12-year period from 1925-37, and all of the struggles that the African-American porters who worked for the George Pullman Railroad Company went through on their way to becoming successfully unionized. It seems so unthinkable and morally reprehensible that not so long ago in history, these hard-working men were allowed to be treated this way, like being beaten up, all called "George" instead of by their real names, ordered around, given tips for doing things like shining passengers' shoes or even barking like a dog, being at the white passengers' beck and call, being accused of stealing company property when it was the white passenger who had been attempting to steal the trains' linens, and fired just because they'd dared to attend meetings about unionizing. And because of the situation at the time, they couldn't protest, since making only $60 a month was still better than having no job.
When the movie starts, in 1925, American society is on the up-and-up, with unions, organized labor, and Socialism not exactly being very popular or approved-of causes, with a lot of hatred, mistrust, and fear directed towards them. Initially, Asa Philip Randolph meets with a lot of resistance when trying to even start a movement for organising the porters. However, he has the advantage of not being a porter and therefore being unable to be fired from that line of work, and he has such great organising skills and such persuasive and impassioned rhetoric that eventually even people who were initially against the idea come over to his side. Along the way the porters and their allies have to put up with things like spies, attempted intimidation by the white men running the Pullman corporation, firings, accusations of Bolshevism, criminal violence, and attempted bribery by the Pullman execs who want Randolph to step down and stop what he's doing. Even when things finally seem to be going their way when FDR is sworn in as president, with more sympathy for organised labor and the working-class, there are still obstacles put in their way by the white establishment, people who just can't grasp that this union is going to happen whether they like it or not, that there's much too much support for it for their old tactics of fear, intimidation, and random illegal unjustified firings to still succeed and go unprotested. They thought it would or could never happen, but it finally did.
This movie is a powerful and moving history lesson and should be required viewing for everyone, whatever their race. Though there's still a lot of racism in America today, at least it's not as awful or as institutionalized as it was back in the Twenties and Thirties. Thanks to people like A. Philip Randolph, Milton Webster, and Ashley Totten, today African-American laborers have a right to be paid more than just $60 a month, the right to speak up when they're mistreated by racists, and most of all the right to be treated like human beings instead of sub-humans all branded with the name George.
