rising from the rails the story of the pullman porter

'This book brings to life the stirring story of the civil rights legacy of A. Named a Recommended Book by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon. 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.ĭrawing 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.

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

Rising from the rails the story of the pullman porter