Miles of Smiles Transcription
Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle Transcript
Brother Cole will lead us in prayer.
Oh God, this morning we are thankful that we are able to gather together as brothers. I ask you to bless every member here one by one. Because it’s getting later than we think, oh God. And I’m asking everyone in this home to pray, give me a prayer, for myself. Being a man of the age I am, I deserve it. And pray for me, I’ll pray for you. And may God take care of each and every one of us, from this place to your return. Amen.
At this time, we have one of the old heads of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Mr. Stewart.
Mr. Chairman, fellow members. As we become more infirmed, sickness and so forth, sometimes we’re confined, even to the nursing home. Yet, we have time to take out with our brothers of yesteryear. And I fully trust that you men coming along, that you too will re-unite and communicate with one another. And carry on the work of fellowship, brotherhood and love. We pass it on to you and you can carry the banner on. Thank you.
The retired Pullman Porters still meet, even today. These were the men who worked on the Pullman railroad cars, the sleeping cars and lounge cars. I can tell you that these retired porters are the last in a long line of men in this country. They represent 100 years of history, stretching from the days of slavery to the civil rights movement of today.
I was born here in Washington D.C., 1011 Fourth Street, Northwest. See, I’m all muddled. On November the 4th, 1881.
George Pullman started the Pullman Palace Car Company just after the Civil War. And it became one of the richest and most powerful companies in America. Pullman was a shrewd businessman. He not only built the cars, he also maintained ownership of them and hired the men to provide service to the passengers.
They used to call the cars “hotels on wheels” because they were so elegant. And of course, the service was very elegant. The conductors who sold and collected tickets were always white men. But the personal service, which is what really made the Pullman Company famous, was provided by Black men. Of course, in the early days, these men were former slaves.
The porter had to do everything. He greeted passengers, carried baggage, made up the sleeping berths, tidied up the cars, served food and drinks, shined shoes, and had to be available night and day to wait on the passengers. For all this, the Pullman Company paid the porter a very small salary. He had to depend on tips from the passengers to make a living.
By the 1920s, Pullman employed more Black workers than any other company in the United States. And the symbol of this elegant service that the company was selling was the humble Pullman Porter.
Oh yeah, this brings back old days, way back, years back. Since I’ve retired from the road and everything, I’m glad to walk in a car like this and see it again. Because the road made me what I am today.
This was the age of steam, when great locomotives pulled famous trains between the cities of the nation. In those days, the only way to travel was by train. And of course, wealthier people always rode in the Pullman cars.
This is one of the old, old diners here, of which you don’t have too much room. They improved them through the years to be bigger and better. But they used to prepare the potatoes, green beans, all of the green vegetables from scratch, from right here in this kitchen. And they always kept a pan there for fish and fish greases. Of course they cooked with oil all the time, or butter. That made the food so much more delicious, too. Everything was cooked beautiful.
They would come with their trays and get their water, everything that they need on the tray. Then they would come up through here. Of course the train is rolling at the same time. And they would stand and brace themselves right here. And serve back to the front. And of course, the waiter always stood somewhere near where he could be conspicuously seen in order to take care of your needs. And he could see your finger.
And of course, back here is the parlor car, first-class parlor car. Special people back here. They got their own little tables, private table to each chair. And they have their private drinks back here with another attendant or a waiter to serve them their drinks and hors d’oeuvres if they so want them. Select people – don’t want to be involved with the second class citizens, you know. In other words, it’s first class people. And they went first class.
Remember these old cars when we used to come back serving people in the car, you know. Passengers always come from the diner after they eat and come back and have drinks, and play cards.
This was a wonderful place to be in order for you to observe the countryside.
Well, one beautiful thing about it, when passengers would come back and count on the porters to tell them everything about every stop and everything. So when they’d be going through the desert and all that, and passing through big falls or over rivers, they’d come back and we’d be back in here telling them about where they was at and what that was, what river that is and all that.
It's truly unfortunate that the average American doesn’t get the chance or opportunity to see America as it once has been, an era that has passed. Sometimes a passenger would be back here rather depressed. And sometimes you had to use a little philosophy to try to cheer that passenger up and try to make his trip or her trip an enjoyable one to a certain extent, to kind of take and put them in a different mood. Then there was the troublesome passenger who got one drink too many. And the result of it is that sometimes you must use diplomacy in order to cope with the many things you had to come in contact with.
Especially you know, with old people, I used to go around and take a lot of time with them. Sit down and talk to them and all that. You had to give service. We gave service in them days. You don’t have service today like we had in them days.
Turn the lights on will you please, so I can see what I’m doing. Richie this is one of the old cars. Look man! Long time since I’ve seen one of these. This is a warning to you to keep these sharks off these people’s backs.
Well, I’ll do that.
They’ll get ‘em, you know that!
That’s true!
They will get ‘em!
Yeah, that’s right.
Aw look here man, let’s make this bed.
This bed here?
Can you still make a bed Richie?
Oh yes.
Well let’s try.
OK, first.
Break it down.
OK.
Don’t break your back now. That’s good.
Going this way aren’t we? We’ll make the head over here.
Right. Make the head over there. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You gotta pull the headboard out.
Well, yes. We were gonna do that. You are acting as though I don’t know how!
Richie, come on now, that’s it. Don’t pull it too far.
This is the headboard.
That’s right, that’s to keep the man from breaking his neck.
And the light.
Break the upper down. You better hurry up and let me make this bed before I quit you. C’mon man, alright? This is the lower berth mattress. I’m gonna bring the lower berth mattress down, and put it on the lower part of the bed. Now this mattress here is a little short than the upper berth mattress, so we have a bolster. This is the bolster. This finishes the bed out to make it complete. I’m gonna throw this back there. And I’ll put it right there. Now you see the mattress is complete now.
It's not quite complete.
Well, it’s alright, it’s good enough. However, look, I’m gonna put on one sheet. This is the lower berth sheet. This goes next to the bottom sheet. Put this one on. Richie this is it, man it’s been a long time. I didn’t think I’d ever do this again. Richie I told you, let me make this bed, man. You make the upper, Richie, right? You’re tall. The blanket goes next. In the old days you had to put a third sheet on it, but we ain’t gonna do that. We’re gonna do this Pullman short-cut.
Now this is the trick a porter used. This is to make a bed look pretty. You pull the sheet back once. You pull it back again. Tuck it there. Fold it here. This is how a porter would make a bed. I believe I’m a little rusty though. You fold it back there, you come here. You bring it over there. Now we don’t have but a pillow. So I’ll put it in the center. Richie how’s it look, cuz?
It looks very good except….
Except what?!
Except your….
Oh, put the foot up.
That’s right.
Now you folks want to get in this bed? I swear that’s a good one!
Hmm, hmnn honey, you sure is wonderful in them clothes.
Yeah, I suppose these clothes is something to look at back here, honey. Where I been while I been training for the job, you wouldn’t notice ‘em. You oughta see them New York gals on Lennox Avenue.
Them gals is fast, I bet. Swishing themselves to catch the men. But honey, you wouldn’t look at none of them fast gals while you’s away from home, would you?
There ain’t none of them pretty in the face like my gal!
Many young men, especially if they were from a small town, wanted the job of a Pullman porter. It paid them a small income, maybe better than they could make at home. Plus there was the excitement of traveling all across the nation. And the porters were known for their intelligence and their dignity. And so the job gave them a certain status with their friends and family. They even made a movie about it with Paul Robeson.
Omit that hypocrite in the street
First thing he do is to show his teeth,
Next thing he do is to tell a lie
Best th8ing to do is pass him by.
Now let me fly
Now let me fly
Let me fly to Mount Zion, oh Lord.
I got a mother in the promised land
Never….
There’s your train, son!
Good-bye, folks.
Now take care of yourself!
Train, train, good-bye brother…
The Pullman porters were really kind of a fraternity. The men worked long hours on the road together. And they helped each other with the work duties. On their layovers at the end of the line, the men stayed in quarters provided by the company. They were often pretty bad facilities. But the porters made the best of it. They would catch up on sleep or play cards. You know the porters had their own card game they called “bid whist.” And of course, the porters were always big storytellers.
See, I was running on a top train, Silver Meteor – from New York to Miami – one playground to the other. And I picked this passenger up at New York – it was a white lady and a colored lady. The white lady had a little dog, a little poodle, in her arms. And was directing me and the red cap as to do with the bags. So I told the red cap put them all in the room, you know. And we’ll get it straight once we get on the way. Well, the white lady was doing all the ordering around, while the colored lady was just right along with her, and I thought this colored lady was the maid, you know. And I goes back to the club car portion of my car where the maid is sitting out there drinking a Coke. I said, well, you know, workers get together, you know. I said, how does the lady treat you, she treat you alright? She said, oh yes, yes, she’s very nice. I say, well, that little dog, usually they have the maid with the dog. Oh well no, she keeps the dog close to her, she tells me. And to make a long story short, the next day we’re coming into Hollywood, Florida where they were getting off. Finally she said, well you can get our bags now. The bags didn’t have a name on it. And I took them all out, except one little handbag that the maid was carrying, I thought was the maid. And I told ‘em….I kept weaving and bounding, is there anything else? Nobody hadn’t greased the palm yet, you know! Is everything alright, you know. I had opened up the door you know, I had let ‘em know everywhere they could walk the dog, you know. And so I finally got this little bag, little handbag, overnight bag from the maid, I thought was the maid. And looked on the….it had a name on it. Ella Fitzgerald. Now all day, all night I rode all day with her and I didn’t know Ella Fitzgerald.
On the train, the porter met celebrities, politicians, and wealthy white people who would otherwise never associate with Blacks. The porter was a gracious host and friend to these passengers. And people happily entrusted their children to his care because he was seen as such a kind and gentle figure.
Porter, porter. Give us more air, will you quick.
Porter, the window, please close. Yessir!
Porter this pillow is as hard as a rock!
Porter come give us more clothes. Yessir!
Porter come here, sir. Porter, stay there.
All night the people complain.
We is porters, dandy porters.
We run on the vestibuled train.
No matter that he was a gracious host on the sleeping cars, when the train pulled in, the porter lost the so-called privilege of being the friend and confidante of white passengers. He was still a Black man and a second class citizen.
I had six brothers and father was dead and my mother was there. And she’d say to me quite a few times, I don’t know what we’re gonna have for dinner. I don’t have any money. And my brothers started to stay out, with the girls, I guess, stay out all night and don’t bring any money home. And my mother was struggling, trying to make me stay in college. Finally I decided that I had to quit. Didn’t want to see her suffer. So I came to the Pullman company. I had the opportunity that I passed up. And after being out here on the road, working as a Pullman porter and seeing the things that go on, I have sat right here on these seats and cried many a night because I did not go to college and finish college. The opportunity was there, but it was hard, and I couldn’t afford to see my mother suffer as she did.
No matter how intelligent or well-educated he was, it was difficult for a Black man in the 1920s to get the kind of job he deserved. For the most part, his choice was between the overalls of a laborer or the crisp uniform of a Pullman porter.
The Pullman company was able to exploit this situation and paid low wages to highly qualified men. The result was that men who could have been lawyers or accountants, and in some cases were lawyers or accountants, had to accept a job earning only $67.50 a month in 1925.
Back in the old days on the Crescent Limited, Sunset Limited, all of the southern trains, Silver Meteor as well, Seaboard Coastline, they had a partition that would come all the way and almost blind these two tables. And these two tables were for colored dining people, and all that portion of the diner up there is for white people to eat. And this is the long way that railroad has come to in modern times. It’s hard for people to really realize that these kind of conditions existed during that time.
Oh in the early days when we first came on, we had one little bed on the couch in the smoking room. The smoking room was where we shined our shoes, and you only had two-and-a-half hours of sleep. And during the night, when you’re trying to sleep, somebody comes in and leaves the door open. And all night, the door is slamming, the door is slamming. In fact, you can’t get any sleep.
The low pay and long hourse were unjust, but even worse was the absolute lack of job security. If a porter was accused of breaking a rule, he was assumed to be guilty and never given a hearing.
And, but along with that, you had to be so careful because anybody got on the train and said you didn’t shine his shoes, or you didn’t brush him off when he got on, or he didn’t like your attitude, or didn’t smile when you’re supposed to, he’d call you in and dress you down, and put you in the streets for probably ten days. You didn’t miss a lot of money cause they weren’t paying you nothing no how, but the principle was you weren’t even earning that much.
Passengers called every porter “George,” as if he were George Pullman’s “boy.” They expected him to always smile for them, so the porters themselves often called the job, ironically, “miles of smiles.” But sometimes it was not so easy.
Well, Hayes was a big politician, it appeared, and he didn’t like colored people. And he had an audience, and he just wanted to show some of his friends how they act down south, how they treat niggers, you know. So he missed the cuspidor and spit on the floor, which I had to clean it up. And I made mention to him, that that’s the reason this cuspidor was there, for him to spit in it. And he was going to show his friends how to treat a nigger, you know. And he booted me. And I was in the process of cleaning it up.
I came back through the club car with four bags, two under each arm, one on each arm and one in each hand. And this man was pretty well loaded, sitting there with some woman. And he stopped me and said, say don’t you pull off your hat in the dining car? I said, I’m not in the dining car. And if I was I still wouldn’t pull it off because I have no hand to hold it with. He said, well don’t you come back through here with your hat on. Well, I was quite young in the service and I didn’t care. So I went back and told this old porter, I didn’t care, give me my ice pick. So he told me it’s not worth it. So when I thought about it, I says, here’s man that don’t know what a dining car is from a club car. And if I go back there and create a problem, I’m just as stupid as he is. So I ignored the whole thing.
You, you either accept it or you reject it. It depends on what kind of porter you are. Well, I accepted it. But of course, I didn’t like it, but what can you do?
But in 1925, we heard about some man in the east, writing about organizing the Pullman porters into a union. And of course I had been there just long enough to see what the conditions were, and I had sense enough to know this guy was on the right track, whoever he was, talking about organizing the porters into a union. And his name was A. Philip Randolph.
Mr. Randolph was born the son of a preacher in Florida in 1891. He moved to Harlem when he was twenty years old, and became interested in socialism. Even then, he wanted to unionize Black workers. Of course, at that time, that was an unheard of idea. There were no Black unions, and hardly any Blacks were allowed to join the white unions. But a group of porters led by Mr. Ashley L. Totten came to Mr. Randolph and asked him to help them organize. And he said that he would. In fact, he said, the Pullman porter seemed to be made to order to carry the gospel of unionism in the colored world—his home is everywhere.
So on the night of August 25, 1925, in the Elk’s Lodge at 129th Street in Harlem, Mr. Randolph called a meeting of 500 porters and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters was born.
In 1927, I was running to St. Louis, Missouri and a man from Nashville came in my car, who was another porter also, in the early morning. And he told me, he said, you know, Randolph, who is trying to organize the porters, is going to speak in St. Louis today at the Pine Street YMCA. He said, I’m going up to hear him, he said, I wish you’d go along with me. I said maybe I will go along with you. And when I heard him talk, he convinced me that he knew what he was doing. Although I didn’t agree with some of the things he said. For an instance, at that time we was making $72.50 a month. And he said if you stick with me, the day will soon come when I’ll have you making $150 a month. I couldn’t believe that. But I went along, I put a dollar in the collection plate.
The company wanted to penalize these men. In fact, the company started another sort of a union, which of course was not a union. So there was the people who felt that they had to be in the company union. But the men under Mr. Randolph continued to talk to the men. But all of this had to be done secretly. That is where I came in here in Washington. The men here were afraid, and someone had to go around and keep them informed as to what was being done. So all of the literature, all of the propaganda was sent to me. And I would secretly go among the men and disseminate this news and collect dues. Now that’s how I became active in this Brotherhood.
And of course the Pullman company had what was known as a “porter instructor,” now that was his title. But we called him a “snitcher” because he, everything he found out about a porter he reported. And even though he was supposed to be a porter instructor, he sat in that meeting and he made a note of every porter who was there.
Now, we had a meeting at a certain home once, and the company found out that we had this meeting. So they called the husband in, the porter in, and asked him about it. The porter was able to show by his time sheet, that he was out of town. But his wife held the meeting!
When I got home, before I got off the train, the superintendent there told me, I understand you attended a meeting of the Brotherhood yesterday in St. Louis. I said, yes I did. Well, I’m gonna tell you right now, we ain’t gonna have any of our porters attending the Brotherhood meeting. I said, well if some porter told you I attended the meeting there, maybe they told you also that I joined yesterday. Before he could answer I said, of course, before I joined I thought about what lawyer I wanted to handle my case if you started messing with my job. And that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna drag anybody into court that messes with my job. And I didn’t even know a lawyer’s name at that time! But I bluffed him out, they didn’t bother me. And from then on, I was a strong supporter of A. Philip Randolph.
Mr. Randolph directed the Brotherhood from his office in Harlem with a small group of men. Mr. Milton P. Webster of Chicago was the first vice-president and Mr. Randolph’s right-hand man. And Mr. C.L. Dellums was a vice-president and leader of the Brotherhood’s division on the west coast.
I started work for the Pullman company in January of 1924. And I got fired as a result of my union activities around the first of October, 1927. Well, when I went over to see the superintendent Mr. O.W. Snoddy, he spent all of the time, he sat there for at least an hour, talking to me about my union activities. He said all we’re doing is furnishing you transportation over this country to spread this Randolph Bolshevik propaganda, you know. And Randolph gets his money from Moscow. I said, don’t you know how to pronounce that word? That’s not Moscow, it’s Moscow. I began to kind of rib him some. I saw my discharge on his desk when I went in, so I knew that I’m there to be discharged. So after he spent all of that time and then he handed me my discharge and I started to get up, he said, Dellums now I want you to remember one thing – you’re not being fired for you union activities, you’re fired for unsatisfactory service.
Although their jobs were on the line, the men of the Brotherhood fought back, at one point even threatening the company with a strike. They gained the support of white labor unions and fought for fair labor laws from the federal government. But it was tough going, because Brother Randolph was preaching a new philosophy that was even opposed by many Black leaders, including ministers and newspapermen. He said that Black people should not beg white businessmen for fair pay and better working conditions. They should organize and demand them.
Hold the fort for we are coming
Union men be strong
Side-by-side we’re marching on
Till victory is won!
Porter Tucker came home one day and said that he’d been taken off of his line. So I went to the station, to the office of the superintendent. I told him that I wanted to know why my husband, B.J. Tucker, had been taken off his line. He said, now why are you taking this matter up? Why doesn’t Tucker take it up? I said, the sign-out man, I knew his name at that time, said that nothing in hell could move Tucker from that line but his wife’s activities in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. You put my husband back on his line or I’ll be back! Well, it was amusing because he seemed to have a fear because a Black woman would come to a superintendent, with the power he had, and speak to him in that manner. Well, the next time my husband got back on his run. Now there had been other times that porters had been penalized for certain things. Their wives would go and beg for them, plead for them, please take my husband back. But Sister Tucker didn’t do that!
Finally, on August 25, 1937, twelve years to the day since the first Brotherhood meeting in Harlem, the Pullman company surrendered. They signed the first agreement ever made between a large American corporation and a union of Black workers.
It can be truthfully stated, that the Brotherhood has achieved job security. Before these agreements existed, porters were unceremoniously fired upon the slightest pretext. It was practically unknown for a porter when once discharged for anything, to be restored to his job without the said porter crawling upon his belly and with great humiliation begging his boss for another chance. What of wages? In this connection, it is no exaggeration to say, that before the Brotherhood championed the cause of the porter, this class of workers were not only the industrial paupers on the railroads of the United States and Canada, but pitiful beggars with hands out-stretched for the alms and gifts. Yes, the Brotherhood took the porter out of the lap of industrial and public charity, and made him a self-respecting worker. It brought, for the first time, sunshine, cheer, comfort, some luxury, and hope into the porter’s home for his wife and children.
So, maybe a couple of years after that, Mr. Cary, we were down there for something, and the man who was the head of the Pullman company was a man named Champ Cary. I guess his name was Champ, that’s all we ever heard. And he said to Mr. Randolph, would it be an imposition for me to ask for a conference, Mr. Randolph, with you, and Mr. Webster and Mr. Dellums? I just want to sit around and talk, we’re friends nowadays. I said, you mean friendly enemies. And, well, we get along , he said, nowadays. And let’s talk, I think we’re doing pretty good. And he said, now let’s be frank about this thing. Here were a handful of colored people, Negroes, got together here and took on the Pullman Company. You know the Pullman Company’s one of the most powerful industrial institutions in the nation, how in the hell do you figure to win? We knew you were crazier than hell, there’s no way to win. But you did! And we’re still wondering – how the hell’d you do it? So Mr. Randolph said, well, Mr. Cary, we’ve thought about it a lot, talked about it a lot. We’re not too certain ourselves how we won, he said. But I guess we could summarize it by saying dedication, and integrity.
After the Brother hood had won the right to organize the porters, the Pullman Company found that they had been defeated. And to make themselves look good, they sent A. Philip Randolph a check, a signed check. All he’d have to do was put the amount of money he wanted in the check. And on the bottom of it, it said, “not to exceed a million dollars.” And I said, it’d been hard to find a man or a woman or a person, as far as that’s concerned, that wouldn’t have accepted that check and drawn a reasonable amount of money off of it. But Randolph made a photostatic copy of that picture, of that check, and framed it and hung it on his wall and sent the original check back to the Pullman Company and told them, “Negro principles were not for sale.”
This is a song, “Marching Together,” that I wrote in 1939. It tells the story of the ladies auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
The Brotherhood brought out qualities of strength in the porters and their wives. They became leaders in their communities, bought homes, and sent their children to college. Thus the porters were able to give their sons and daughters the opportunities they themselves had been denied—to become lawyers, and teachers, and businessmen. As an organization, the Brotherhood laid the foundation for the civil rights movement in this country. It inspired Black people that they could organize and get results.
For example, there was the ladies auxiliary, which raised money and supported the work of the Brotherhood during its darkest days. I myself was the international secretary-treasurer and president of the local here in Washington, DC. In the labor movement, the American Federation of Labor had always resisted Black membership until the Brotherhood broke down those barriers. The porters changed the image of Blacks from strike-breakers to strong union men. And in 1941, Mr. Randolph forced President Franklin Roosevelt to create the Fair Employment Practices Commission by threatening a mass march on Washington by thousands of Black people. Years later, he organized the famous 1963 March on Washington.
In 1955 in Alabama, Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, which marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Most people associate the boycott with Dr. Martin Luther King, but it was the Pullman porter, Mr. E.D. Nixon, who originated the idea and organized the boycott.
They arrested her and throw’d her in jail like a common criminal. So I made bond for her and I said to her, Miss Parks, after we got home, I said, you know what, I said, I’d like to use your case to break down segregation on the buses. And then I recorded a number of names on a tape recorder that night. And the next morning I got up and started to calling them, telling them about what happened. And I said it’s my decision now that we organize a bus boycott and fight this discrimination on the buses. Ralph D. Abernathy, which most of you have probably heard of, was the first man I called. He said, yeah Brother Nixon I’ll go along with you. That’s fine. And I called the next man Rev. H.H. Hubbard, I expected him to go along with me cause, number one, he was president of the Ministers Alliance, and number two, he was my pastor at the church I went to. So I didn’t expect him to fight me. He told me he’d go along with me. The third person I called was Martin Luther King and he said, Brother Nixon let me think about it a while and call me back. So I went on, I called eighteen people and called him back. He said, yeah, Brother Nixon, I decided I’m gonna go along with you. I said, I’m glad you decided to go along with me, Rev. King, I said, your church is the only church right downtown. And I’ve told eighteen other people to meet at your church this evening at three o’clock and it’d look kinda bad to have that many people coming up to your church for a meeting of this kind and you weren’t there. So, he said, well I’m gonna be there. I said alright. So we set up this meeting.
And that was Friday, December the 2nd. And Sunday morning, December the 4th, the headline was, “Negroes boycott the Montgomery city line.” And, of course, I got hold of the paper that morning and it was a very good story. I called every minister in town, have you read the paper this morning? And some no and some yes. I said, read it, take it to church with you and tell the people at the church that we want two thousand people at the Hope Street Baptist Church tomorrow night. If I hadn’t known anything about organizing labor, you wouldn’t of had them out there.
And then after that, that’s when Rev. King came into the picture. He was elected that night.
But I want it to be known, that the humble Pullman porter, the man who had been kicked around, and shoved around, and worked without adequate pay, was the man that stimulated and worked for and fought for, this boycott in Montgomery.
I was able to make a contribution solely because we had the Brotherhood and I wasn’t afraid. Again I have to come back to A. Philip Randolph. In my opinion A. Philp Randolph was the greatest Black man we had in the last hundred years.
It is a fact, in which the organization takes great pride, that the old days of abuse have gone.
He died at the age of ninety years, one month, and one day old. And the last time I saw him he didn’t hardly know who I was. But he’s my friend. And he’s my kind of man.
I had a man from Texas once get on my car. And he went to the club car and he got pretty full. I was back in the smoker, trying to shine shoes. And he came back with all kind of stories about, he had a Negro mammy, and he loved Black people. And he worried me so, I’d go out and get other shoes and he’d still be there. So he worried me so much, and finally he said, you know, it’s a shame that these Negroes rape these people, isn’t it? What you think should be done to them?
By that time, I was filled up. I said, pardon me, do you wish me to answer you as a servant or answer you as a man? He said, answer me as a man! I says to him, I says, sir, in the Negro race, they can get a woman as black as your shoe, you can get a woman as green as an olive, they can get a woman as white as a white woman. I said, but in the white race, I never see a black white woman. I said, now ask yourself the question, who is the rapist? Aww, I think I’ll go to bed. He resented it and got up and went to bed, walked out.
The porters knew that being a servant was simply a role that they put on and took off along with their uniform. They weren’t ashamed of being servants. But they never lost sight of the fact that first and foremost, they were men.
I think if you have the courage and dignity, and respect for yourself, respect for people, that you can be a man while being a servant.
We needs no introduction, you can see just who we are,
Porters on a Pullman train.
Yes, sir!
Standing at the platform of the sleeping car,
Ready, quick and willing to explain.
Yes, sir!
Where you is located we must be remunerated,
Don’t forget the little friendly tip.
We think you oughta, give us a quarter,
for then you’ll have a very pleasant trip.
The porter had often been depicted as an object of ridicule in movies and songs. He had to struggle against this popular image of himself as an “Uncle Tom.”
Anything that you can do, you can do it with your head up. It’s what you think of yourself.
Right.
If you think you’re an Uncle Tom, you are an Uncle Tom. Whether you’re a Pullman porter or whatever you are.
That’s right!
But I never thought that I was an Uncle Tom.
So now that’s my philosophy—to get along with people with a smile. A smile…
Don’t mean you’re Uncle Tom’n’.
When you smile, that don’t mean you’re Uncle Tom’n’. You’re meeting a man on an equal basis. The right hand of fellowship means so much, you know. But “Tom’n’”? No way!
Another thing, when the passenger comes in and the first thing is, he want to grin and he’s smiling and he’s pleasant, and you can be pleasant with him without grinning, as we call it. You can treat him nice without that. You don’t have to do that. And if he’s gonna tip me because I’m gonna grin, I don’t need it! And don’t want it! But if he tips me because of my service, that’s what I’m there for. To give him that service.
Today, the elegant cars of the Pullman Company no longer roll across America. In 1969, the once mighty Pullman Company went out of business and the railroads stopped the practice of hiring only Black men as porters. In 1978, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters ceased to exist as a separate organization and merged with the larger Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks. In 1979, A. Philip Randolph died. And so, you would have to say, that the era of the Pullman porter is over.
There is a poem by Langston Hughes that contains these lines:
And porters on a railroad car
Who make, each time they make a bed
A hammock on a star
That sings in space
The dawn-song of a race.
