Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters first meeting - August 25, 1925

On this day in 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters held its first meeting. Learn more about the Brotherhood in an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class at https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-brotherhood-of-sleeping-car-porters.htm.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Greetings everyone, Welcome to This Day in History Class,
where we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
Today is August. The day was August. The Brotherhood of

(00:28):
Sleeping Car Boarders, a labor union organized by the black
employees of the Pullman Company, had its first meeting. George
Mortimer Pullman founded the Pullman Company in eighteen sixty seven
during the reconstruction era, after the emancipation of enslaved black
people in the South. The Pullman Company manufactured railroad cars.

(00:52):
Pullman's big claim to fame was the sleeping car, or
passenger rail cars that have beds for travelers to make
overnight trips more comfortable railroad lines least Pullman cars, which
were really popular in the US from the mid eighteen
hundreds to the mid nineteen hundreds. The Pullman Company employed

(01:12):
black maids and porters, many of whom were formerly enslaved.
In the beginning of the company's history, Pullman knew that
many black people needed work badly and would take low wages.
The work that the porters did on Pullman cars is
what really made the experience top quality. Porters prepared beds

(01:34):
for passengers at night and made them up in the morning.
They served food and drinks to passengers, They cared for
passengers when they were sick, and they made sure passengers
were safe on their trips. Porters were respected in their communities,
they got to travel around the country, and after tips,

(01:54):
they were paid better than a lot of black people
and other professions, but they're hours were long and the
work was often thankless. They had to work four hundred
hours or travel eleven thousand miles in a month to
earn full pay, and they were still paid a lot
less than white people in other professions. At the Pullman Company,

(02:16):
porters did not have any job security, and they had
to pay for their own food, lodging, and uniforms. If
passengers took items from their cars, then their pay was stopped.
They did not get much sleep at night since they
worked such long days, and even when they did, they
had to sleep on couches in the smoking car, and

(02:38):
the conditions of their work maintained the master servant relationship
between black and white people that was perpetuated under slavery.
Porters were often called George, regardless of their real names,
presumably because of the old practice of plays being named
after their masters, and the Pullman founder's name was George.

(03:00):
Unhappy with these conditions and how they faced punishment if
they brought these issues up to the company, the porters
tried to organize. After a few attempts to unionize from
nineteen o nine to nineteen thirteen, the Pullman Company itself
decided to create the Pullman Porter's Benefit Association in nineteen fifteen.
Five years later, the company also established the Employee Representation Plan,

(03:23):
which was funded through employee salaries, but those initiatives did
not completely address the porter's issues, so a small group
of Pullman porters approached labor movement leader A. Philip Randolph
for help in starting a union. Randolph was reluctant to
help them initially, but he warmed up to the idea,
and the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Boarders had its first

(03:47):
meeting on August nineteen. The union published its first demands
in The Messenger, a magazine that Randolph founded. It called
for abolishing tipping, pay raises, pension increases, in better rest breaks.
The Pullman Company used various tactics to disrupt the union's efforts,

(04:08):
like using spies, firing porters, involved in the union, intimidating
people interested in joining, and putting propaganda and media. So
the union remained secretive, and the porters wives were instrumental
in keeping the union alive by fundraising and attending meetings
when porters could not be present. It took a while

(04:31):
for the union to gain traction, but in nineteen thirty seven,
two years after the National Relations Labor Act was enacted,
the Pullman Company signed a labor agreement with the Brotherhood.
The porter's minimum salary was increased and working conditions improved.
In nineteen forty seven, the Pullman Company let go of

(04:51):
the sleeping car business. As the railroad industry declined in
the nineteen fifties. In nineteen sixties, so did the number
of porters membership in the Brotherhood. Many porters were involved
in the Civil rights movement as well. In Night, the
Brotherhood merged with another union, the Brotherhood of Railway Airline

(05:13):
Steamship Clerks, freight Handlers, express and station Employees. I'm Eve
step Coote and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you would like
to learn more about this topic, you can listen to
the episode of Stuff you missed in history class called
the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters. The link to that

(05:35):
episode is in the description. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook at t D i h C podcast. Thanks
again for listening and we will see you tomorrow. Yeah.

(06:02):
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