Rising from the Rails Comment
Seattle attorney Jan Peterson sent me a note about my post involving Black Porters which I thought I should share with you:
Paul, I read with interest, as usual, your piece on Rising from the Rails. My family on my father’s side were railroad people and as a result we had a pass to ride on the trains whenever we wanted. Even as late as my early childhood in the forties I remember Pullman porters. They were all black men in spiffy black and white uniforms and as service industry workers performed their duties with dignity, professionalism, and often with a smile and good humor for which my grandmother always proffered a generous tip. When railroads were the primary mode of lengthy travel tens of thousands were so employed and formed the backbone of an emerging black middle class. From this middle class, with a respect for learning that you noted, came the educated Negro upper class including the clergy that spearheaded the activist civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. These porters were also the source of much of the social contact whites had with blacks in a deeply segregated country and gave an impression of black people that was most civilized. One of the most powerful voices and forces of the early civil rights movement for racial justice was A. Philip Randolf, the President of the Pullman Porters Union. He carried himself with such dignity and steel that the "movement" had to be accorded a measure of respect that otherwise might not have been afforded. It was also in no small measure a source of funding for Thurgood Marshall and his band of legal warriors. It is a proud history.