Pullman Porters

Pullman Porters

They were overworked, underpaid and demeaned, but generations of porters on the Pullman Palace Car Company helped promote the rights and futures of African Americans.
HISTORY.COM EDITORSUPDATED:OCT 8, 2021ORIGINAL:FEB 11, 2019
https://www.history.com/topics/black-histo...

Just a few years after the Civil War, the Chicago businessman George M. Pullman began hiring thousands of African American men—including many former slaves—to serve white passengers traveling across the country on his company’s luxury railroad sleeping cars.

While they were underpaid and overworked and endured constant racism on the job, the Pullman porters would eventually help to fuel the Great Migration, shape a new Black middle class and launch the civil rights movement.

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