History
Prior to this time in the 1870s the concept of sleeping cars on railroads has not been widely developed. Pullman porters served American railroads for nearly 100 years from the 1870s until the late 1960s. Pullman porters were unionized in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under A. Philip Randolph. Randolph would become an important leader in the civil rights movement.
While the pay was very low by the standards of the day, in an era of significant racial prejudice, being a Pullman porter was one of the best jobs available for African American men at that time. By the 1960s between the decline of the passenger rail system and the cultural shifts in American society, the contribution of the Pullman porters became obscured, becoming for some in the African American community a symbol of subservience to cultural and economic domination.
Read more about this topic: Pullman Porter
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)