Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Central to this excellent analytical history are the porters themselves. This book is not a biography of A. Philip Randolph or George Pullman. Rather, the vigor of this narrative arises from the men who were sleeping car porters, and most of their testimony comes with their real names and families. The porters worked hard at their extraordinary jobs, and they left a strong legacy in their descendents. I am a railfan, and I learned a lot of detailed history from this book. However, I also received a sense of the accomplishments of these men of the past 140 years. Author Larry Tye, it seems to me, has done an excellent job of transmitting an understanding of the porters' trials, hopes, and victories. I am most grateful to these American workers, and I am most grateful to the author for his clear presentation.

You can't see train porters anymore, except in the movies. Everyone knew the role of the ubiquitous porter, a role with duties, uniform, and demeanor. In the movies, actors played porters as porters had played their occupational roles, busy and even servile, humorous and fawning, wise to the needs and foolishness of their passengers and ignorant as members of their race were held to be. The paradoxes of the porters get a wonderful historical evaluation in _Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class_ (Henry Holt) by Larry Tye. A history of the porters was overdue, but Tye is squeaking this one in. There were generations of porters, but the last of them is slipping away, and some of them he interviewed for the book did not live to see it printed. Porters, for all their servility and for all the neglect that passengers often gave them, made an impression, and Tye makes the wonderful case of another paradox. The porter, whose attitude might be classed now as "Uncle Tom-ism", was a necessary element to bring about the Civil Rights movement.

The porters were, from beginning to end, creatures of the Pullman Rail Car Company. George Pullman brought out the first one in 1865, and by 1867, he was looking for a reliable way to staff the cars; Pullman needed one single worker who would be hotelier, waiter, chambermaid, butler, and information desk. There was a newly invented pool of workers to draw from, the former slaves from the South. Many had worked in plantation houses and were familiar with duties requiring close proximity to wealthy white folk. There was poor pay and atrocious hours, but many porters appreciated the opportunity to escape the south and trade overalls for bow ties and starched pants. Porters could read the business pages discarded by their passengers, and they learned how the Pullman Company was flourishing while they were barely getting by. Part of the porters' history involves eventual unionizing and developing themselves as a commercial force, and the indefatigable efforts of A. Philip Randolph to bring about a union are highlighted here. Randolph was a Civil Rights leader for decades, and eventually organized the March on Washington, for which Martin Luther King (who held Randolph in reverence) is better remembered.

By the time the porters had reached their greatest unified commercial strength, their profession was coming to an end. Road and airplane travel took passengers away, and Amtrak was just a ghost of past glory. Tye convinces readers, however, that the porters had a disproportionate effect on the black community. At their height, porters were 0.1% of blacks in America, and yet for any black American excelling in any field in the last half century, there is an odds-on chance that there was a Pullman porter in that person's past. They did it by the same means: "... sacrificing for their children, and deferring dreams of self-improvement for a generation or even two, but never abandoning them." They may have been underlings, but the best of them profited by being around even the most unpleasant passengers. About one incident, a porter explained that after some slight, he was able to hold his tongue: "It was an accomplishment. I kept from hating passengers like that. I called myself outsmarting them." Tye's impressive look at the influence of a long-gone profession is at its best when bringing back the words and stories of the porters themselves. "My mother taught me never to quarrel with a fool, but to humor him. That's what I do," said one. Another concluded, "You just gotta haul folks as they come. Some's good, some's bad, some's nice and some's crabby."

Larry Tye did an exemplary job of research and interviewing long before he attempted to tell the story of the Pullman porter's place in history, unionization and civil rights. Such detail would be expected of working journalists...unfortunately it is a rarity. Pullman porters were a group of gentlemen one step removed from slavery when Pullman capitalized on their subservient skills...which they performed to perfection. Only those of us in our senior years can remember when porters greeted you and made you comfortable in peacetime and wartime. Larry has superbly described the porter's talents, dreams, successes and failures. Their struggle set an example for and yielded a notable group of future black leaders. That contribution should never be forgotten.

Slavery ended with the American Civil War, and was reinstated in the encapsulated world of the luxurious Pullman railway car. Paid poorly, and heavily reliant on the tips needed to adequately support their families, the black porters were forced to continue a tradition of cow-towing to their demanding white passengers. Larry Tye immersed himself in an extensive search for details, which led him through the Pullman Archives, located in Chicago's Newberry Library, and to some of the front doors of the now aged and diminished population of porters and their families. His drive to know these men and their histories has culminated in a book, which is a fascinating rendition of their combined stories, and a tribute to their unfathomable dignity, which they upheld through the most undignified of circumstances. Interlaced with the personal accounts of the porters themselves, Tye presents historical perspectives which include George Pullman, eccentric founder of the Pullman Company, and A. Phillip Randolph, the man who led the porters through many "dangers, toils and snares" to form a union and begin to carve out a claim to their rightful spot in the American workforce. Tye has a knack for taking the black and white facts of history and colouring them in, bringing history to life and these proud men into the reader's heart. More than merely history, "Rising From the Rails" offers readers the "telling details" that will both raise their ire at the injustices that were endured by the porters and spark an admiration for these remarkable men.

As I read this book, it brought back memories of distant relatives who had "worked on the railroad." After my grandfather died, my grandmother, later in life, married a man who "worked on the railroad." I remember her visiting us when I was very young and she was very old. My parents said that she could ride the train free and that the "railroad men" would "look out for her." My father had a cousin who use to stay with us when he came to town. He "worked on the railroad."

I loved the book and am packaging it tonight to send to my aunt for her 86th birthday. After she reads it, I'm sure she'll have more stories to tell about "railroad men."

Thanks Larry Tye for your efforts. You'll probably get enough stories from readers to write another book.

This is very insightful, nostalgic book.
For those who experienced the joy of firstclass rail service (pre AMTRAK) via Pullman car, it salutes a era of service, quality and creature comforts that the Pullman Porter provided for traveling Americans. It reflects the quiet dignity and stoic wisdom that so often personified the Pullman Porter.
It also provides interesting insight as to how the civil rights movement spread via the rails, and word of mouth, as the porter
traveled the country "jaw boneing" with his fellow practioneers.
Performing often thankless tasks for the well heeled (and those who wished to be)the Pullman Porter left a proud mark on the legend, history and lore of rail travel. A great read!

Larry Tye tells the fascinating story of African Americans, emancipated after the Civil War, starting a steady climb to civil rights and the middle class by exploiting job opportunity that ironcially was supposed to exploit them.

A must read for railroad passenger enthusiasts and civil rights advocates unaware of the noble struggles waged peacefully before the violence encouraged by television.