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Rising From the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
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Product Description
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African American men in the country by the 1920s. In the world of the Pullman sleeping car, where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, porters developed a unique culture marked by idiosyncratic language, railroad lore, and shared experience. They called difficult passengers `Mister Charlie`; exchanged stories about Daddy Jim, the legendary first Pullman porter; and learned to distinguish generous tippers such as Humphrey Bogart from skinflints like Babe Ruth. At the same time, they played important social, political, and economic roles, carrying jazz and blues to outlying areas, forming America`s first black trade union, and acting as forerunners of the modern black middle class by virtue of their social position and income. Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter, and provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1983173 in Books
- Published on: 2004-06-15
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
What have the poet Claude McKay, the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, the explorer Matthew Henson, the musician "Big Bill" Broonzy and college president Benjamin Mays in common? They all worked for the Pullman Company, which until 1969 owned the sleeper cars for and ran the sleeper service on the U.S. railroads, and was at one time "the largest employer of Negroes in America and probably the world." Blacks, preferably those with "jet-black skin," supplied "the social separation... vital for porters to safely interact with white passengers in such close quarters." Although Tye makes the general case for the centrality of "The Pullman Porter" in the making of the black middle class (and in much of American cultural life), the particular porter becomes supportive detail for a highly readable business history at one end and labor history at the other. Former BostonGlobe journalist Tye (The Father of Spin) interviewed as many surviving porters as he could find as well as their children, and immersed himself in autobiographies, oral histories, biographies, newspapers, company records—wherever the porter might be glimpsed, including fiction and film. Entertaining detail abounds: Bogart was a solid tipper; Seabiscuit traveled in a "specially modified eighty-foot car cushioned with the finest straw." So does informing detail: the long hours, the dire working conditions, the low pay, the lively idiom, the burdensome rules. While "The Pullman porter... was the only black man many [whites] ever saw," Tye shows what whites never saw—the grinding, often humiliating, realities of the job and the rippling effect of steady employment in the upward mobility of the porters' children and grandchildren. 40 b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Although Tye focuses on Pullman porters and the formation of the black middle class, his analysis of class perceptions and race relations reverberates to the current day. Following Reconstruction, industrialist George Pullman took advantage of the limited opportunities available for freedmen, hiring and exploiting blacks--the darker the better--to serve as porters on his railroad. The porters suffered low wages, long hours, and weeks if not months away from home. In addition, they were expected to adopt a servile demeanor to provide comfort to the mostly white patrons of the Pullman sleeping cars. But the upside was employment, travel, and middle-class values and opportunities. Moreover, the fight for union recognition through A. Phillip Randolph's leadership was the basis for progress for blacks during the pre-civil rights era. The porters' labor dispute and efforts to include blacks in more favorable positions in the war industry led to the first march on Washington. Tye also explores the tension between the perception of Pullman porters as docile servants and their challenge to the status quo. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
--Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.
“Larry Tye has written a much-deserved love song to the forgotten men of the civil rights and labor movements – the Pullman Porters who defeated a major corporation, helped finance numerous civil rights battles, spread news and culture nation-wide, and set a high standard for dignity.” –Julian Bond, Chairman, NAACP Board of Directors
“This is one terrific book. It's a chapter of American history about which few of us know much, and it's a reminder of what life was like for African-Americans in this country, at least until the last few decades. But it's mostly about these men-- their courage, their tenacity and their hopes and dreams for their children and grandchildren. Many of them are no longer with us, but they should and would be rightly proud of how much their kids and grandkids have achieved and how much they have given to this country.” –Michael Dukakis, Former governor of Massachusetts, former vice-chair of Amtrak board
"This book does a magnificent job in relating how a relatively small group of struggling workers shaped not only the African-American community but all of the United States. The story of the Pullman porter is no less important than any other struggle for civil rights in the American labor movement." –James P. Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
“Larry Tye's Rising from the Rails recreates an important chapter in the history of black people in this country: the hard earned passage of thousands of blacks into the middle class. By examining the progress of the Pullman porter - from the step and fetch it caricature to pensioned union member - Tye captures one of black people's many struggles to achieve equality. This is a story all Americans should know.” –Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Senior Managing Director at Lazard LLC and author of Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir
"Rising from the Rails chronicles the pioneering role the Pullman porters and their leader, A. Philip Randolph, played in building America's union movement. This vividly told story should be required reading for those who care about labor history, race history, and US history." –John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
