Pullman Porter Story on NPR's Morning Edition - Thurs., 07 May 2009

This story/ report - “Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class” - was broadcast in the 6:50 AM segment today (Eastern Daylight Savings Time) - its 7 mins. 19 secs. long. Likely, it will be broadcast again in about a half-hour at 8:50 AM for those stations that carry and repeat the show from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM (as long as it isn’t pre-empted by something else). Otherwise, here’s the link to it:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103880184

The broadcast version is significantly different from the text version linked above. It is mainly an interview with author Larry Tye who wrote Rising from the Rails: The Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. It is coordinated with this coming Saturday’s (May 9th) National Train Day - apparently “Amtrak is honoring the legacy of Pullman porters in Philadelphia”.

A major portion is the story of a Pullman porter who obtained the autographs of the 1918 Boston Red Sox baseball team - including Babe Ruth - on a baseball that he gave back to a group of boys in Freeport, Maine. Ironically, the story doesn’t say how that porter came to obtain those autographs - but we all know, right ?

The story also related how the porters came to be called “George”, which they detested. That caused me to recall the traveling salesman who founded "The Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters ‘George’ " (or a similar name for the organization). Will have to see if I can recall where that came from - probably Holbrook’s or Stover’s The Story of American Railroads, and if there’s anything on-line about it.

  • Paul North.

In response to the part of the story about how demeaning it was to call the porters “George”:

“In 1916 the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters “George” (SPCSCPG) was founded by a wealthy Chicagoan, George William Dulany, Jr. Over the following two decades the society’s ranks swelled to over 30,000 people, all named George and including French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, George Herman “Babe" Ruth, and King George II of Greece. The SPCSCPG was partly a half-joking expression of the annoyance the Georges felt at sharing a nickname with the African-Americans who staffed the Pullman Company’s sleeping cars. However, there were those among the society’s Georges who saw and objected to the racism involved in the practice; in the antebellum South slaves were often called by their masters’ first names, and the Pullman Porters were viewed as something like the slaves of George Pullman."

From: “chicago weekly online”, the self-styled independent voice of the University of Chicago, at: http://chicagoweekly.net/2008/02/07/pullmans-porters-a-new-exhibit-at-the-hotel-florence-looks-back-on-the-everyday-struggles-of-chicagos-famous-african-american-workers/

A quick Internet search for “Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters George” yielded a pretty good number of results - this is just one of them.

  • PDN.

Paul, you have the right book, by Stewart Holbrook. There is a footnote on page 333 which speaks of the society.

Johnny

Johnny - thanks for checking and confirming that.

For more on the movie “10,000 Men Named George” - see:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280377/

It seems to be mainly about the drama of organizing the porters into a union - I didn’t see anything in ther eviews or summaries about the on-train aspects of their work or life.

Some research into the “Index of Magazines” (below) turned up the following. Mudchicken (& others) - note that the March 1976 Trains had the article on the CB&Q’s operation by noted historian Richard C. Overton. Also, the Oct. 1981 recollection on being a dining car steward was very good. I believe that’s the one where the “linen guy” [my term] - who was later discovered to be something like 90 or 100 years old - would recite, “Use 'em fast, Use ‘em slow, When they’s gone, They ain’t no mo’.”

  • Paul North.
Meals en route
Trains, January 1941 page 4
inside story of dining car service
( B&O, DINER, PASSENGER, “SAGLE, LAWRENCE W.”, TRN )

Dining car blues
Tr

Oscar Peterson’s father was a porter for the C.P.R. he seemed to have raised a rather prominent son.

who is Oscar Peterson???