From their beginning in 1868, plush Pullman (named for George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company) train cars were staffed mostly by Black American porters, many of them newly freed slaves.

The Washington Post (August 24, 1997) reported some of the painful experiences of porters who worked on the "fanciest trains during the heyday of rail travel" in the 1930s and '40s.

Workers--paid just $66 a month for 400 hours--were at the beck and call of passengers and at the mercy of supervisors. They "were often chastised without just cause, were fired frequently and at times, had their pay docked.

"Their reliance on tips forced them to perform onerous jobs and often endure insults and racial slurs--with a smile. The porters hauled luggage, ironed suits, baby-sat children, shined shoes, brought meals to the passenger's berth, tended to the sick and still had to find time to keep the cars clean."

A. Philip Randolph, who is also widely credited with beginning the civil rights movement during World War II, began the organizing drive on August 25, 1925, at a New York meeting attended by 500 workers. When a contract was signed with Pullman 12 years later, starting pay increased to $150 a month and hours of work were reduced from 400 hours (or 11,000 miles) to 240 hours a month.

Today, the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), founded in 1965 by Randolph and Bayard Rustin, remains committed to serving in the field of civil rights actions and in the promotion of cooperation with organized labor. APRI has 158 chapters across the country.

The following article by Norman Hill talks more about the "Randolph Legacy and America's Trade Unions."

On the night of August 25, 1925, a meeting was held at 160 West 129th Street in Harlem. It was a gathering that would change the course of black, trade union, and American history. The meeting's organizer, A. Philip Randolph, addressed a group of the Pullman Car Company's black sleeping car porters. Thus began the story of Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Over the next 12 years, Randolph and the porters fought against tremendous odds to obtain recognition of their union. The Pullman Car Company had the money to resist any attempt to unionize its workers and had few scruples about the methods it employed. The company used spies and stool pigeons to infiltrate the Brotherhood along with threats, suspensions, and firings to intimidate the Brotherhood's supporters. As if that was not enough, Randolph had to fight hard to win the support of the American Federation of Labor, which back then had little enthusiasm for organizing black workers. Also, Randolph had to combat strong anti-union sentiment within the African American community that had developed over the years because of organized labor's discriminatory policies.

Still, the courage and perseverance of Randolph and the porters finally won the day. In 1937 the Pullman Car Company recognized the Brotherhood as the porters' bargaining agent, and on August 25, 1937--12 years to the day of the Brotherhood's founding--the company agreed to sign its first contract with the Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood was the first black-led union to secure recognition from a major American company. Its struggle has inspired many black and low-wage workers, including the sanitation workers in Memphis, whose strike Martin Luther King was supporting at the time of his assassination in that city; poultry workers in Mississippi; textile workers in South Carolina; and many others. The Brotherhood's victory also made Randolph a force within organized labor--he eventually became a vice president at the AFL-CIO--and he used his influence to fight with great success against the racially discriminatory practices of some unions. Today, thanks in considerable part to him, organized labor is the most integrated institution in the United States.

Randolph fought his great fight against the Pullman Car Company because the sleeping car porters, like almost all black workers, were highly exploited. Before their first union contract cut their hours in half and raised their wages, they worked an incredible 400 hours a month at rock-bottom pay rates starting at $100 a month. Randolph knew that nothing would change unless the porters had their own organization to fight for them. As he once said, "At the banquet table of nature there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold.... And you can't take anything without organization."

Since the great majority of blacks were (and are) workers, and since blacks historically have been the most exploited workers, Randolph believed that of all organizations, the trade union movement was the most important ally of African Americans. And the record shows he was right. The wages and working conditions of black workers, more than any others, have been improved through unionization. For example, full time median weekly earnings of black union workers are nearly 50% higher than the earnings received each week by non-union black employees. At the same time, organized labor has been the most powerful lobbying force for the progressive social and civil rights legislation so vital to African American communities.

Yet in recent years the trade union movement has been under heavy attack. Corporations demand give backs at the bargaining table and seek to end or limit the union's presence in the work force by hiring replacements during strikes, moving jobs overseas, outsourcing work to nonunion shops, and downsizing their work forces. They also use high-priced consulting firms and lawyers to fight union organizing campaigns.

Meanwhile, corporate America's right-wing political allies gained control of Congress in 1994 and have joined the assault against trade unions. Because President Bill Clinton has appointed National Labor Relations Board members who are fair to labor, including William Gould the first black chair, Congress has been trying to cut the NLRB's budget and reduce its authority. Last year the anti-labor, anti-civil rights leaders on Capitol Hill tried to tie a minimum wage hike to passage of the Team Act, which would have made it easier for corporations to create company unions. Thanks to President Clinton, these efforts have failed so far. But right-wing control of Congress has made it impossible for organized labor and its allies to secure labor law reforms that would create a more level playing field for unions during strikes and organizing drives.

Corporate and right-wing attacks on labor go a long way toward explaining why the proportion of workers represented by unions has declined from over 30 percent in the 1950s to 15 percent today. But the new AFL-CIO leadership headed by President John Sweeney is determined to turn this trend around. President Sweeney has committed the AFL-CIO to spending one-third of the AFL-CIO budget on organizing, hoping to prod affiliated unions to give the highest priority to organizing.

This push to expand the ranks of organized labor is of enormous significance to black communities. Since organized black workers are the greatest beneficiaries of the trade union movement, the movement's health is essential for their well-being. Many nonunion black workers will benefit from future unionizing drives.

With blacks making up a large proportion of nonunion workers, the Randolph legacy of organizing the historically most oppressed members of the work force will be of assistance in these drives. The A. Philip Randolph Institute, a national organization of black trade unionists co-founded by Randolph, will bring that legacy to bear in helping the labor movement to unionize black men and women. We will help locate blacks interested in becoming labor organizers; we will round up support from elected officials, religious leaders and heads of civil rights and community-based organizations for union organizing drives; and we will talk to our nonunion brothers and sisters, telling them of the advantages of union membership.

These activities along with those of the unions themselves will, I believe, expand and re-energize the labor movement. Then organized labor will become a stronger advocate of what it has long supported: economic justice and racial equality, values so indispensable to the future of African Americans.

(Sources and excerpts from the APRI, IBEW Journal November 1997 and Modern Maturity January-February 1998.)

A yearlong celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Brotherhood's founding recently commenced at Chicago's A. Philip Randolph/Pullman Porter Museum Gallery, located in Chicago's historic Pullman District. The gallery features photographs, video clips, and railroad memorabilia; a registry of members and their families will culminate in the first reunion this summer.

"The response from former porters has been phenomenal," says Lyn Hughes, founder and director of the museum. "The youngest of them is now 88; most thought that this part of history would be forgotten." For more information about the Pullman Porter Museum Gallery, telephone 773-928-3935.