By the 1920s, a peak decade for the railroads, some 20,000 African-Americans were working as Pullman Porters and train personnel. (Source: Lyn Hughes; A. Phillip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum)

Pullman porters, who wore dignified uniforms, traveled cross country, and met celebrities and dignitaries, seemed to live glamorous lives. They often transported black newspapers to areas where black media wasn’t available and were held in high esteem in the black community. But they were also dehumanized, ridiculed, and undermined.

“People don’t know that Gordon Parks, the famous photographer, was a Pullman porter,” says Lyn Hughes, the founder of the A. Phillip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum in Chicago. “More recently, people have come to find out that [Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall and [civil rights leader] Benjamin Mays were Pullman porters … During that era, the sleeping car porter was one of the few jobs that a black man could have that was valued or recognized as something of importance.”

Thomas Gray, 71, grew up around the railroad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his father was a Pullman Porter and his grandfather a porter and porter/brakeman. So, it was no surprise that Gray sought to work as a porter during the summers while he attended college at the University of New Mexico. (For more on the history of the Pullman porters, check out our audio slideshow.)

“[We] were the role models of the African American community mainly because [we] had the good jobs,” Gray says. “You got to meet new people [which] made you more mellow in your attitude … It brought me out of my cocoon and helped me adapt to the world.”

After working as a porter for four years, he graduated in 1961 with an electrical engineering degree and went on to work at aerospace and defense corporation Boeing for 32 years.

A GRAND HISTORY

In 1864, George Pullman, the Chicago businessman who invented the Pullman Sleeping Car, opted to exclusively hire recently freed black men to serve passengers “hand and foot.”

Hughes explains on her Website that by the 1920s, a peak decade for the railroads, some 20,000 African Americans were working as Pullman Porters and train personnel. At that time, this was the largest category of black labor in the United States and Canada. Porters were able to establish a comfortable life. They were able to buy homes, pursue higher education and start businesses.

Despite some of the perks, Porters often dealt with overt racism. White passengers opted to call the porters “George” as a way to dehumanize and objectify them as property of George Pullman.

The responsibilities of porters extended beyond serving passengers, with some porters working as brakemen, conductors, and switchmen—skilled jobs traditionally held by white railroad workers — but blacks were still given the title of porter and were paid substantially less.

“They worked 20 hours and slept four, and when they slept, they were not allowed to sleep in the train where the other folks were. They had to sleep in the smoking cars,” Hughes says.

In 1925, A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), but it wasn’t until Aug. 25, 1937, after a bitter battle with the anti-union Pullman Co. that the BSCP was recognized as the official union of the Pullman Porters and porters began to receive equal pay and benefits. The BSCP was the very first African American labor union to sign a collective bargaining agreement with a major U.S. corporation.

Last week, former black railroad workers as old as 99 years of age made a pilgrimage to Oakland, California, to be honored by Amtrak for their hard work, unparalleled service and steadfast determination in the face of stark racism. Amtrak held similar events in Chicago and Washington D.C. last year. This long overdue praise was given to dining and sleeping car porters who served passengers traveling from coast to coast during the country’s golden era of rail travel.

Amtrak located these black railroad workers or porters using the Pullman Porter Registry, a database compiled by Hughes that contains the contact information for thousands of living porters.

Samuel Coleman, 80, of Las Vegas, attended the ceremony in Oakland. He worked on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad line for 25 years as a dining car waiter.

“It’s kind of sad when you look back at those years. We were somewhat the ambassadors [for the Pullman Co.]. We were the ones that they encountered first,” Coleman says. “They would want you to smile and give them the best service, and we did it because it helped us to take care of our families and do some of the things that we wanted to do.”

Coleman played an influential role in bridging a partnership between the BSCP the dining car waiters. In the late 1950s, Coleman and others sought to gain recognition under the Brotherhood in order to gain better wages and treatment. The resulting union is known today as the Transportation Communications International Union.

“We thought it would be important for our employees to gain an understanding and appreciation of the type of service that these gentlemen provided on the train and the conditions in which they worked,” says Darlene Abubakar, director of national advertising at Amtrak. “No one saw the indignity that they experienced on the train. People saw the glamour of it. We need to recognize our unsung heroes.”