Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class

An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights.

George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars just as the Civil War was ending, and the offer of a steady job and the chance to see the world proved irresistible. Scores of former slaves signed up to serve as maid and waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of well-heeled whit...