Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
by Larry Tye
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Book Summary Information
Author: Larry TyeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-06-01
ISBN: 0805078509
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
Book Review: Subalterns of the Sleeper
Summary: 4 Stars
Larry Tye is a white guy writing about a specific aspect of the "black experience." Now, some white guys can pull this off very well indeed. For example, William A. Owens' historical novel WALKING ON BORROWED LAND gives the reader a very compelling and quite convincing view of being a black professional in Jim Crow Oklahoma. In Tye's case, however, I keep feeling that he's the outsider looking in, and I keep wondering if his conclusions are entirely accurate. Perhaps the fact that he wrote about black American sleeping car porters while sitting in a study on Lake Como overlooking the Swiss and Italian Alps has something to do with his remaining just a little bit divorced from his subject.
I believe the greatest strength of RISING FROM THE RAILS is its informative description of the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black labor union; its eventual success in winning recognition from the historically racist Pullman Company; and the critical involvement of the Brotherhood's leaders in kick-starting the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In fact, that last strength may be the most significant of all. I have little doubt that much, or even most, of white America can identify Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. However, I am less certain that it can also identify Asa Philip Randolph or Edgar D. Nixon or can explain the connection between the Brotherhood and the Montgomery bus boycott. I also doubt that very many non-historians even know that Todd Lincoln, son of "the great emancipator" president, followed George Mortimer Pullman as president of the powerful railroad sleeping car company and perpetuated the extremely discriminatory, racist policies of that business. In brief, this is a good history book and will probably fill in quite a few blanks in readers' knowledge.
For me, though, Tye fails in his avowed purpose, which is to link the experience of the black Pullman porters with the rise of the black middle class in the United States. Time and again, he offers examples of porter's children or, more often, grandchildren becoming well educated, successful lawyers, doctors, and educators. This he attributes to the example set by their porter forebears, whose constancy and work ethic, despite the indignities heaped upon them by both the company that employed them and by the white traveling public, set the stage for their descendants' successes. I am not quite able to find that a convincing argument, and I suspect that, had he been so inclined, Tye could also have found examples of porters' descendants who remain poorly educated, who labor in menial jobs, and who may even be imprisoned for criminal activity. He may as well have argued that my career as an educational program manager was attributable to my own grandfather's having been a locomotive engineer for the Frisco Railroad. As fascinating as his job may have been, I do not believe it influenced anything two generations removed from it.
Many times, Tye repeats the assertion that Pullman porters exemplified "solid middle class values" in their work habits and life styles. Throwing that sort of phrase around comes very close to jingoism and is also misleading. Porters were definitely not middle class. Do the "middle class" labor as underpaid servants? Many men who were fortunate enough to gain relatively steady employment were motivated to hold on to that employment despite its demeaning aspects. Making up berths, shining shoes at night, brushing off coats, and fetching drinks still beat the heck out of pulling a burlap bag down a cotton row under a blistering sun. Surely, Pullman porters demonstrated much wisdom in holding on to their mostly-indoor jobs, but does that alone qualify them as exemplifying middle class values? Perhaps, but I still dislike that jingoistic phrase.
Another eyebrow-raising claim in Tye's book comes on page 77 when he states that Pullman porters "traveled to fifty states with Wall Street barons and baseball gods." Does Tye have no concept of the railroad system of which he is writing? No Pullman car has ever followed rails to "fifty states." Even today, much less in the first half of the 20th century, no rails connect the contiguous United States to Alaska or Hawaii.
So how shall we sum up RISING FROM THE RAILS? It is not convincing as a sociological explanation of how the existence of Pullman porters underpinned a new black middle class, and it has a few ridiculous statements (such as railroad porters traveling to fifty states). Nonetheless, it also has quite a few excellent historical photographs and includes a fascinating orientation to the foundations of the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century in the United States. For that history alone it is worth reading. A very extensive notes section, bibliography, and index conclude the book and, along with the pages of photographs, entice me to rate it at four Amazon stars, though I would not argue with those preferring only three. I suppose the bottom line is that, if one does not know who A. Philip Randolph and his lieutenants were, one should read the book. Conversely, those who already understand the history of the labor and civil rights movements in the United States will find little new information here.
Summary of Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
"A lively and engaging chronicle that adds yet another dimension to the historical record." -The Boston Globe
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistable. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African Americans in the country by the 1920s.
Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistable. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African Americans in the country by the 1920s.
Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.
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