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PULLMAN PORTERS: CIVIL RIGHTS RISING FROM THE RAILS
Series: Black History Month
Presenter: Jane Marshall
Target Audience: Students in grades 5 -12
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Students will learn:
- Economic, cultural, and social characteristics after 1865 (the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, how slaves forged their own culture in the face of oppression, the experiences of escaped and freed slaves)
- The social and cultural influence of former slaves in cities of the North (their leadership of African-American communities, how they advanced the rights and interests of African Americans)
- The role of transportation and its impact on African-American migration
- Explore Pullman porters' work, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), Asa Philip Randolph, the BSCP Ladies Auxiliary, and Halena Wilson
- Explain the importance of the train to the lives of Southern African Americans and discuss its symbolism.
PRE-ACTIVITIES:
1) Students should read segments from this definitive book on Pullman Porters:
Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
Larry Tye, Macmillan, 2004
2) Listen to these NPR interviews with author, Larry Tye :
3) Ask students for reasons behind the shifts in the African American population following the end of the Civil War. Continue the discussion until students have identified some reasons such as job and school opportunities; family ties.
4) Students will research Pullman porters' work routines and evaluate their impact on migration in the United States.
Program Description:
Rising from near-servitude in the years following the Civil War, Pullman Porters became the backbone of the rail industry and ambassadors of middle class culture. The story of the Pullman Porters is a relatively unknown story about black America, but it’s a great American success story. The Pullman porter as a social force shows the importance of this nearly forgotten group of workers who almost single-handedly created the black middle class out of poverty-stricken ex-slaves. They embraced the necessity of education and experience, worked hard at their jobs and left a strong legacy in their descendents, and helped to organize and fund the civil rights movement. The porters' story is one of courage and fortitude in the face of racism.
As a teacher, Mrs. Jane Marshall had three former Pullman Porters come to her classroom in Virginia followed by Mrs. Rosina Tucker, a 103 year old African-American woman. In support of her Pullman porter husband, Mrs. Tucker became an activities in the movement. Years later she spoke in schools, churches and a TV talk show to educate people about the movement. The videoconference, "Pullman Porters: Civil Rights Rising from the Rails," enables us to keep the story of the first black labor union alive.
George Pullman brought out the first sleeping car in 1865, and by 1867, he was looking for a reliable way to staff the cars. Pullman needed one single worker who would be hotelier, waiter, chambermaid, butler, and information desk. There was a new pool of workers to draw from, the former slaves from the South. Many had worked in plantation houses and were familiar with duties requiring close proximity to wealthy white folks.
There was poor pay and atrocious hours. Many porters who were self-educated and, subsequently, that of their children -- is said to have begun when they read their passengers' discarded newspapers and magazines. However, many porters were college graduates, and more than a few black trainmen were law school and medical school students who earned tuition working summers as dining car waiters.
By its very nature, the work of a Pullman porter could be demeaning with the plantation mentality that lingered in America well into the 20th century. But at a time when even college-educated black men might wind up doing menial labor, the porter's job provided the kind of vicarious exposure and connection to powerful people that helped shape today's black middle class. By the 1900's, when 100,000 passengers a night lay tucked into its sleeping berths, the Pullman Company was the largest single employer of black men in the United States.
Because the porters were exposed to the rich and successful and traveled widely, they acquired previously undreamed ambitions for their children. Descendants of porters include former big-city mayors Tom Bradley and Willie Brown, jazz great Oscar Peterson, former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, musicians the Neville Brothers, and Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph.
This videoconference will share stories that illustrate great courage and personal victory and impart lessons about how we should treat each other and how we can all be better human beings. Tipping made it possible for the porters to make a livable wage. Other black men couldn’t say the same as they worked the fields where slaves had toiled.
In segregated America before 1960, porters (all of whom were black) made beds for white passengers on the nation's sleeping cars, cleaned their clothes, shoes and spittoons as needed, and navigated a social climate where an unchecked response to a racist remark could cost them their jobs, or worse.
The work was steady and commanded a salary far above what most other blacks, North or South, would ever earn, and there was a ripple effect of steady employment and upward mobility of the porters' children and grandchildren. Porters achieved this amazing impact on American history because their work provided them with the "chance to enter the cherished middle class" and to pass that status onto succeeding generations. Pullman porters believed in higher education . . . and embraced the gospel of economic upward mobility.
Pullman porters occupied a valued economic position within black America, because they made more money than nearly 85 percent of working people in the black communities, most of whom earned salaries at or below the poverty level. Segregation prevented all but a very small black middle class from emerging before 1960.
How, then, did these working-class porters embrace those "middle class" values of continued education and eventual upward mobility? Fraternal organizations embodied these values, church groups sponsored literary and oratorical contests for youth, and a religious faith framed the hopes of many students and teachers as they toiled in their segregated schools. As important as the porters were in encouraging such efforts, they were but part of a far broader movement that, between 1940 and 1980, resulted in a rise in black high school completion rates from 15 to almost 80 percent.
The courage and commitment of the Pullman porters to creating justice and equality before the modern civil rights movement did not develop in isolation, but rather through struggles deeply grounded in black community life.
Still, the porters suffered all manner of indignity, from long hours on their feet to sleeping on thin mattresses on top of dining tables to being called “George,” after sleeping-car magnate George Pullman who cornered the sleeping-car market. Every passenger-train company used his outfitted cars, which cost twice as much to travel in as a standard seat. The elegance extended to food that equaled the meals served in the world’s top restaurants.
A. Philip Randolph, formed the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters which was the first recognized Black union. When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to sit in the back of the bus, her first call was to Edgar D. Nixon, who ran the local office of the porters’ Sleeping Car union. Jo Ann Robinson and her Montgomery women's political committee first proposed the bus boycott. It was Mr. Nixon who tapped Martin Luther King Jr. to lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott that sparked the civil rights movement.
The story of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters is a relatively unknown story about black America, but it’s a great American success story. These unheralded porters rose from a life of servitude aboard the trains to producing an immense legacy that really affects the social, political and economic fabric of the United States today.
The Pullman era lasted a little over a hundred years. It began in 1867, peaked in the early decades of the 20th century and finally ended in 1969. By then, air travel had become the leading mode of transportation for the wealthy, and the porters had left their mark.
In the process, the Pullman Porters built a union that defeated a major corporation and, from the beginning, supported civil rights efforts. These porters created a unique communications system, carrying newspapers, magazines and word of political and cultural activities from one black community to another on their regular runs.
Porters could read the business pages discarded by their passengers, and they learned how the Pullman Company was flourishing while they were barely getting by. Part of the porters' history involves eventual unionizing and developing themselves as a commercial force, and the indefatigable efforts of A. Philip Randolph to bring about a union. Randolph was a Civil Rights leader for decades, and eventually organized the March on Washington, for which Martin Luther King (who held Randolph in reverence) is better remembered. The civil rights movement spread over the rails, and word of mouth, as the porter traveled the country spreading the message of civil rights for all.
By the time the porters had reached their greatest unified commercial strength, their profession was coming to an end. Road and airplane travel took passengers away. At their height, porters were 0.1% of blacks in America, and yet for any black American excelling in any field in the last half century, there is an odds-on chance that there was a Pullman porter in that person's family. They did it by the same means: "sacrificing for their children, and deferring dreams of self-improvement for a generation or even two generations, but never abandoning their dreams."
POST-ACTIVITIES:
1) RESEARCH: A. Philip Randolph was a constant advocate of civil rights and equality. Assign students to prepare and present reports on the contributions of Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Tell students to conclude their reports with research and statements on current leaders and organizations whose purpose is to lobby for equal rights and better working conditions.
2) Dramatization: North toward Home?
Have members of the class play the roles of members of a family trying to decide whether to move from Mississippi to Chicago in the 1920s or the 1940s. Make sure the students don’t all hold the same opinion about moving north. Suggest that students consider the following in determining whether to stay in Mississippi or to move to Chicago:
- Geography (including climate)
- Economic opportunities
- Schools
- Social and political opportunities
FURTHER READINGS:
Oh, Freedom! Kids Talk About the Civil Rights Movement With the People Who Made it Happen
Casey King and Linda Barrett Osborne; foreword by Rosa Parks; portraits by Joe Brooks, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
Interviews by young people with participants in the civil rights movement accompany essays that describe the history of efforts to make equality a reality for African Americans.
The New African American Urban History
Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl [editors], Sage Publications, 1996
This collection of essays covers: 1) the transplanted social customs of rural blacks to the North, 2) the experience of newly urbanized blacks as household wage laborers, 3) black working-class opposition in the Jim Crow South, and 4) overviews of Black Americans as city dwellers from the early-to-late 20th century.
Farewell to Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of Segregation in America
R. Kent Rasmussen, Facts on File, 1997
This volume in the Facts on File “Library of African American History” series is a treatment of the de facto segregation imposed on black Americans, as well as the fall of Jim Crow brought on by the civil rights movement.
National Standards to which this program aligns:
This lesson plan may be used to address the academic standards listed below. These standards are drawn from Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education: 2nd Edition.
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: U.S. history
Standard:
Understands how the United States changed between the post-World War I years and the eve of the Great Depression.
Benchmarks:
Understands issues associated with urban growth in the late 19th century (e.g., demographic, economic, and spatial expansion of cities; how city residents dealt with urban problems; how urban bosses gained power).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: U.S. history
Standard:
Understands how the United States changed between the post-World War I years and the eve of the Great Depression.
Benchmarks:
Understands impacts on economic conditions in various regions of the country (e.g., the extension of railroad lines, increased agricultural productivity and improved transportation facilities on commodity prices, grievances and solutions of farm organizations, the crop lien system in the South, transportation and storage costs for farmers, and the price of staples).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: civics
Standard:
Understands issues concerning the disparities between ideals and reality in political and social life.
Benchmarks:
Knows discrepancies between American ideals and the realities of American social and political life (e.g., the ideal of equal opportunity and the reality of unfair discrimination).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: geography
Standard:
Understands the nature, distribution, and migration of human populations on the Earth’s surface.
Benchmarks:
Understands the impact of human migration on physical and human systems (e.g., impact of rural-to-urban migration on suburban development and the resulting lack of adequate housing and stress on the infrastructure, effects of population gains or losses on socioeconomic conditions).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: geography
Standard:
Understands that culture and experience influence people’s perceptions of places and regions.
Benchmarks:
Understands how individuals view places and regions on the basis of their ethnicity, social class and belief system.
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: geography
Standard:
Understands that culture and experience influence people’s perceptions of places and regions.
Benchmarks:
Knows ways in which people’s changing views of places and regions reflect cultural change.
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