The Pullman Company was a separate business from the railroad lines. Known as Porters, they provided a level of service that far exceeds today’s standards of travel. Pullman’s sleeping cars were staffed almost exclusively by African Americans. The system comprised 71 different contract railroads and over 115,000 miles of track nationwide. At its peak in 1929, the company’s fleet of cars could sleep over 150,000 passengers each night. Between 18, Pullman attached its sleeping cars to nearly every train that traveled over all or a portion of its route at night. To generations of travelers, the name Pullman was synonymous with impeccable service and style.
The most influential black man in America was the Pullman Porter.” – Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, Larry Tye, Holt & Company Press, 2004 He launched the Montgomery bus boycott that sparked the civil rights movement – and tapped Martin Luther King, Jr. He discovered the North Pole alongside Admiral Peary and helped give birth to the blues. He was the one black man to appear in more movies than Harry Belafonte or Sidney Poitier. Dubois, although both were inspired by him.
“The most influential black man in America for the hundred years following the Civil War was a figure no one knew.
0 kommentar(er)
