19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Feedback to Larry Tye, August 29, 2004
This review is from: Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class (Hardcover)
It is an incredibly well and
thoroughly researched piece of literature. What impressed me most was
how well you expanded the scope of the book way beyond just the story of
the Pullman Porters and beautifully told the story of what might be
called the second emancipation of the African Americans. You showed
clearly how the struggle of the Pullman Porters was really the precursor
of the broader struggle of all African Americans to attain their just
place in the American society and what an important and vital role the
Pullman Porters played in that struggle.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Subalterns of the Sleeper, February 15, 2008
Larry Tye is a white guy writing about a specific aspect of the "black experience." Now, some white guys can pull this off very well indeed. For example, William A. Owens' historical novel WALKING ON BORROWED LAND gives the reader a very compelling and quite convincing view of being a black professional in Jim Crow Oklahoma. In Tye's case, however, I keep feeling that he's the outsider looking in, and I keep wondering if his conclusions are entirely accurate. Perhaps the fact that he wrote about black American sleeping car porters while sitting in a study on Lake Como overlooking the Swiss and Italian Alps has something to do with his remaining just a little bit divorced from his subject.
I believe the greatest strength of RISING FROM THE RAILS is its informative description of the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black labor union; its eventual success in winning recognition from the historically racist Pullman Company; and the critical involvement of the Brotherhood's leaders in kick-starting the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In fact, that last strength may be the most significant of all. I have little doubt that much, or even most, of white America can identify Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. However, I am less certain that it can also identify Asa Philip Randolph or Edgar D. Nixon or can explain the connection between the Brotherhood and the Montgomery bus boycott. I also doubt that very many non-historians even know that Todd Lincoln, son of "the great emancipator" president, followed George Mortimer Pullman as president of the powerful railroad sleeping car company and perpetuated the extremely discriminatory, racist policies of that business. In brief, this is a good history book and will probably fill in quite a few blanks in readers' knowledge.
For me, though, Tye fails in his avowed purpose, which is to link the experience of the black Pullman porters with the rise of the black middle class in the United States. Time and again, he offers examples of porter's children or, more often, grandchildren becoming well educated, successful lawyers, doctors, and educators. This he attributes to the example set by their porter forebears, whose constancy and work ethic, despite the indignities heaped upon them by both the company that employed them and by the white traveling public, set the stage for their descendants' successes. I am not quite able to find that a convincing argument, and I suspect that, had he been so inclined, Tye could also have found examples of porters' descendants who remain poorly educated, who labor in menial jobs, and who may even be imprisoned for criminal activity. He may as well have argued that my career as an educational program manager was attributable to my own grandfather's having been a locomotive engineer for the Frisco Railroad. As fascinating as his job may have been, I do not believe it influenced anything two generations removed from it.
Many times, Tye repeats the assertion that Pullman porters exemplified "solid middle class values" in their work habits and life styles. Throwing that sort of phrase around comes very close to jingoism and is also misleading. Porters were definitely not middle class. Do the "middle class" labor as underpaid servants? Many men who were fortunate enough to gain relatively steady employment were motivated to hold on to that employment despite its demeaning aspects. Making up berths, shining shoes at night, brushing off coats, and fetching drinks still beat the heck out of pulling a burlap bag down a cotton row under a blistering sun. Surely, Pullman porters demonstrated much wisdom in holding on to their mostly-indoor jobs, but does that alone qualify them as exemplifying middle class values? Perhaps, but I still dislike that jingoistic phrase.
Another eyebrow-raising claim in Tye's book comes on page 77 when he states that Pullman porters "traveled to fifty states with Wall Street barons and baseball gods." Does Tye have no concept of the railroad system of which he is writing? No Pullman car has ever followed rails to "fifty states." Even today, much less in the first half of the 20th century, no rails connect the contiguous United States to Alaska or Hawaii.
So how shall we sum up RISING FROM THE RAILS? It is not convincing as a sociological explanation of how the existence of Pullman porters underpinned a new black middle class, and it has a few ridiculous statements (such as railroad porters traveling to fifty states). Nonetheless, it also has quite a few excellent historical photographs and includes a fascinating orientation to the foundations of the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century in the United States. For that history alone it is worth reading. A very extensive notes section, bibliography, and index conclude the book and, along with the pages of photographs, entice me to rate it at four Amazon stars, though I would not argue with those preferring only three. I suppose the bottom line is that, if one does not know who A. Philip Randolph and his lieutenants were, one should read the book. Conversely, those who already understand the history of the labor and civil rights movements in the United States will find little new information here.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A missing piece of history, September 23, 2004
This review is from: Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class (Hardcover)
Larry Tye has done a huge service in writing about an important aspect of American society with "Rising from the Rails." His well-researched and well-written account of the role of the Pullman porter as a social force shows the importance of this nearly forgotten group of workers who almost single-handedly created the black middle class out of poverty-stricken ex-slaves. Tye expertly traces the nearly one hundred-year history of men and women who not only brought home the necessity of education and experience, but also helped to organize and fund the civil rights movement. The porters' story is one of courage and fortitude in the face of dibilitating racism, and Tye's breadth of knowledge on a hitherto ignored subject is engaging.
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