Only African-American men from the South were hired to be Pullman porters. In post-Civil War America, the company's owner, George Pullman, believed that white passengers would feel the most comfortable and safe with someone who was essentially invisible to them at that time, an ex-slave. By the 1920s, the Pullman Company provided more jobs to African-American men than any other American company. After a man was chosen to be a porter, he was given a character assessment and extensive training.
Early porters were generally required to be away from their families for long periods at a time. Many of the train hubs were in the North, and most of the porters lived in the South. This became less of an issue once blacks began migrating to the North for work. A porter often put in 400 hours a month. The pay was low. The job was physically demanding, especially pulling down the upper berths from the ceiling each evening and returning them to their position in the morning. There were many very strict rules. For example, bedding and towels were dirty once they had been unfolded. The porter was required to be available to the passengers 24 hours a day, which made sleeping difficult.
Although black porters were hired because whites at that time considered ex-slaves invisible, the Pullman porter was anything but invisible in black society. They held one of the best jobs available to blacks at that time. They traveled extensively and saw much of the country, so they had many stories to tell. Wages may have been low, but a good porter could make a lot of money in tips. Many porters owned houses and cars. Several generations of a family might be porters, essentially inheriting the job from the previous generation.
Unions generally prohibited blacks from joining. Although the company tried to form several organizations designed to provide the porters with a sense of belonging to a union, none were very successful. In 1925, the first meeting of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was held in Harlem. It was not until 1937, however, that the Brotherhood was able to get the Pullman Company to agree to a contract. But in later decades, Americans traveled less and less by train. The 12,000 porters who belonged to the Brotherhood in 1925 had shrunk to a mere 1,151 in 1968, a year before the Pullman Company ceased operations. And as the Pullman sleeping cars faded into history, so did the Pullman porters.
