Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class

Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0805078509 ISBN13: 9780805078503 Release Date: June 2005 Publisher: Holt Paperbacks Length: 352 Pages Weight: 0.80 lbs. Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.2" "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