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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 n