Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945

Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945

Author: Beth Tompkins Bates

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-01-14

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0807875368

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Between World War I and World War II, African Americans' quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics--which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action--by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company. Bates shows how the BSCP overcame initial opposition from most of Chicago's black leaders by linking its union message with the broader social movement for racial equality. As members of BSCP protest networks mobilized the black community around the quest for manhood rights and economic freedom, they broke down resistance to organized labor even as they expanded the boundaries of citizenship to include equal economic opportunity. By the mid-1930s, BSCP protest networks gained platforms at the national level, fusing Brotherhood activities first with those of the National Negro Congress and later with the March on Washington Movement. Lessons learned during this era guided the next generation of activists, who carried the black freedom struggle forward after World War II.


North of the Color Line

North of the Color Line

Author: Sarah-Jane Mathieu

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-11-29

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0807899399

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North of the Color Line examines life in Canada for the estimated 5,000 blacks, both African Americans and West Indians, who immigrated to Canada after the end of Reconstruction in the United States. Through the experiences of black railway workers and their union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, Sarah-Jane Mathieu connects social, political, labor, immigration, and black diaspora history during the Jim Crow era. By World War I, sleeping car portering had become the exclusive province of black men. White railwaymen protested the presence of the black workers and insisted on a segregated workforce. Using the firsthand accounts of former sleeping car porters, Mathieu shows that porters often found themselves leading racial uplift organizations, galvanizing their communities, and becoming the bedrock of civil rights activism. Examining the spread of segregation laws and practices in Canada, whose citizens often imagined themselves as devoid of racism, Mathieu historicizes Canadian racial attitudes, and explores how black migrants brought their own sensibilities about race to Canada, participating in and changing political discourse there.


The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford

The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford

Author: Beth Tompkins Bates

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0807835641

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In the 1920s, Henry Ford hired thousands of African American men for his open-shop system of auto manufacturing. This move was a rejection of the notion that better jobs were for white men only. In The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford


The Pullman Porter

The Pullman Porter

Author: Vanita Oelschlager

Publisher:

Published: 2014-02-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781484416112

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Porters worked in early train cars, they would look, listen and learn from their predominantly white passengers. They would read the newspapers passengers left behind, listen to conversations and begin to talk to one another. The porter learned how i


Rising from the Rails

Rising from the Rails

Author: Larry Tye

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1466818751

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"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."—Newsday An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights 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 the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon. • Named a Recommended Book by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times


Civilities and Civil Rights

Civilities and Civil Rights

Author: William H. Chafe

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780195029192

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The 'sit-ins' at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro launched the passive resistance phase of the civil rights revolution. This book tells the story of what happened in Greensboro; it also tells the story in microcosm of America's effort to come to grips with our most abiding national dilemma--racism.


Marching Together

Marching Together

Author: Melinda Chateauvert

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780252066368

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In this first book-length history of the women of the BSCP, Melinda Chateauvert brings to life an entire group of women ignored in previous histories of the Brotherhood and of working-class women, situating them in the debates among women's historians over the ways that race and class shape women's roles and gender relations. Chateauvert's work shows how the auxiliary, made up of the wives, daughters, and sisters of Pullman porters, used the Brotherhood to claim respectability and citizenship. Pullman maids, relegated to the auxiliary, found their problems as working women neglected in favor of the rhetoric of racial solidarity.


Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

Author: Rebecca Sharpless

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-10-11

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0807899496

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As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home.