Persistent Porters Forced A Union 60 Years Later, Painful Saga Remembered

Memories of their early years as porters on the fanciest trains are painful - memories of working 400 hours a month for just $66, of being at the beck and call of white passengers and the mercy of supervisors.

They hauled luggage, ironed suits and polished the wood and brass of the Pullman Palace Car Co.’s elegant railroad sleeping cars.

Conditions changed 60 years ago this weekend with the founding of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters Union, an event that helped lead to the civil rights movement.

“Young people would do well to take a look at and learn about sleeping car porters,” said Lyn Hughes, organizer of a weekend 60th anniversary commemoration of the union’s founding.

“They show what can happen when people make up their minds to do something,” said Hughes, executive director of Historic North Pullman Community Development Association, located in the Chicago neighborhood that once was its own city, created and owned by the Pullman company.

The porters fought for 12 years with what was then one of the most powerful U.S. companies to win their labor contract.

The lengthy process made a legend of their leader, A. Philip Randolph, who’s credited with beginning the civil rights movement by threatening to march on Washington during World War II to demand jobs for blacks in the defense industries. He succeeded without holding the march.

The company had been started by George Pullman, who began leasing his passenger cars to the railroads in 1867 and hired newly freed slaves to work on them.

Before the union, working for Pullman was a mixed blessing.

“You had to be real tough,” said 80-year-old Leroy Shackleford, a porter from 1937 to 1953, who eventually became the union’s vice president.

The job included more than helping passengers with baggage or preparing their sleeping berths. If a passenger wanted to eat in his berth, the porter walked to the dining car for food. He baby-sat children, shined shoes and ironed suits. He tended the sick and still had to find time to keep the car clean.

“And if (passengers) complained, the company would call you in and dress you down,” Shackleford said.

“(Supervisors) were unfair and at times docked your pay,” he added. “They would fire people frequently.”

And with that $66-a-month pay, “tips were the thing that really made it the kind of job it was,” Shackleford remembered.

But the reliance on tips forced porters to perform onerous jobs - and often endure insults and racial slurs - with a smile.

“He was essentially at the whim of the passengers,” said David Perata, a historian whose book “Those Pullman Blues” was published last year. “It took an incredible man to work on the trains. They had to be part psychologist to deal with the white passengers.”

For some, memories are still painful.

“So much we went through, you try to get it out of your mind,” said Ernest Porter, now in his 80s.

Randolph began his drive on Aug. 25, 1925, at a New York City meeting attended by 500 men. Organizing efforts had to remain secret because the company adamantly opposed unions.

“The Pullman company was so powerful, it enlisted preachers and black newspapers to denounce Randolph as a communist and a threat to black employment,” Perata said. “And they used violence and coercion. They fired hundreds.”

But by holding secret meetings, at times using porters’ wives’ tea parties as cover, Randolph prevailed, signing a contract with Pullman on Aug. 25, 1937.

Starting pay increased to $150 a month. Instead of working 400 hours, or 11,000 miles a month, the contract reduced time on the rails to 240 hours monthly.

The union merged in 1979 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks.