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
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