Quotes from or about men who worked as porters on Pullman cars
I was able to make a contribution solely because we had the Brotherhood, and I wasn’t afraid. And, again, I have to come back to A. Philip Randolph. The Civil Rights Movement saw to it that black people were able to do things legally, like ride on a Pullman car, say. But the labor movement saw to it that black people had the money to buy the ticket to ride on the Pullman cars, see? What good is it to have the right to do something, if you don’t have the money to do it? The labor movement gave black people the opportunity to do things that the civil rights movement gave the right to do.
–E.D. Nixon, Pullman porter and organizer of the 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott
My father helped a lot of people who were out of work or had too many children to feed. He’d bring home loads of food that the railroad was going to throw away. That’s how lots of us black people made it down south…helping one another.
–Anderson Betts (son of a Pullman Porter)
When you got off your car you went to the quarters. There’d be maybe a couple hundred porters, maybe, in a place like New York, gathering around in groups, laughing, telling tales, playing cards. Porters act like brothers. If you saw a uniform, you felt like you had a friend. All those porters be together from different districts. You might be in New York, you’d have Kansas city porters, Tampa porters, Jacksonville porters, Boston porters, and sometimes porters were going in all directions and from everywhere. California, San Diego, down there. We have porters sometimes from conventions, going to inaugurations sometimes. There’d be thousands of porters you’d be coming in contact with, hauling people.
–Leon Long, Pullman porter
The black railroad man was a traveling aid society for black people, because when parents had to come [North] to get jobs and finally were able to bring their families, one by one, and establish their homes, most of them traveled under the care of the Railroad man. If youngsters were leaving the South, coming to Boston, they were put on a train in the care of a Pullman porter, or waiter, or cook—whatever the person was the family knew best. The parents knew that the railroad man was going to see that the child ate and was going to reach his destination safely.
–Francena Roberson, Porter organizer interviewed by Robert Hayden
Race workers are the backbone of the Race, and upon their welfare and the advancement of labor depends the progress of all phases of our life, whether religious, social, fraternal, civic or commercial. Hence the problems of the workers are of vital importance to all elements of the group and merit their cooperation and assistance in the efforts towards solutions.
–Milton P. Wenster (Porter), Chicago Defender, December 21, 1929
Source: The quote from E. D. Nixon can be found on http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/2000/Fraternal/pullman1.htm (Document 5.12.5)