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. 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 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. 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.
"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."- NewsdayĪn engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights
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