The Pullman porters may get most of the press, but members of another group of mostly Black workers associated with George Pullman’s famous railcars are emerging from the shadows of history.
Black maids also worked on those trains, facing much of the same discrimination and sharing in some of the triumphs with their male co-workers. They took center stage during a program Saturday at Greenstone United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood.
“Today is a good day to learn things you didn’t already know,” said Luther C. Mason, Greenstone’s pastor. “It’s so great to be able to share this great history with you all.”
Agency and Activism: Black Women’s Untold Stories featured professors Miriam Thaggert and Jane Rhodes discussing these women’s challenges, as well as insights from Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller about her great grandfather who was a Pullman Porter.
“There’s these untold Black history stories,” said Ve’Amber Miller, a park ranger at the Pullman National Historic Park who helped organize and host the event. “We decided to focus and hone in on Black women in particular.”
The Historic Pullman Empowered Organization, the Pullman Civic Organization, the Historic Pullman Foundation and the National Park Service helped plan the event.
Thaggert, who teaches at University of Buffalo, came across information about the maids when she was researching Pullman porters at the Newberry Public Library in Chicago. She would go on to curate an exhibit at the library about the maids and their roles on the rails. Her recent book, “Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad” chronicles some of the Black travelers and workers on these trains from that era.
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But the issues faced by Black women of that time haven’t gone away, Thaggert said. In 2015, a predominantly Black women’s book club was kicked off a Napa Valley wine train for allegedly being too rowdy, she said, and the women sued the train company.
Thaggert also recounted the experience of Anna Julia Cooper, a writer, activist and feminist, who walked onto a train and saw one sign for “colored” people and another for “ladies.”
“Cooper wondered, under which heading do I go?” Thaggert said.
Through her research, she also learned one maid was chastised for reading when she should have been working.
“Even with all these rules, Black women were trying to find time for themselves,” said Thaggert.
Rhodes, who leads the Department of African American Studies at University of Illinois Chicago, discussed the accomplishments of Black women like Lucille Randolph, wife of A. Philip Randolph, the labor leader and activist who organized the nation’s first major African American union.
“What no one knows is his wife was someone who was invisible but really key to the development of Randolph’s organization,” Rhodes said of Lucille, an independent entrepreneur who graduated from Howard University.
Rhodes has written several books, including “Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of A Black Power Icon.” She said Black women don’t always have a voice.
“As long as that’s the case, the Black community as a whole can never flourish,” Rhodes said.
Miller discussed her great grandfather, a Pullman porter whose neighbors in Pullman often saw him walking around the neighborhood.
“I take great pride in knowing him as a man,” she said. “I didn’t really realize the significance, how family ties build up any community. I find other people who lived in the neighborhood who remember him but didn’t know he was a porter.”
The event included a place for people like Miller’s great grandfather and other important community members alongside people who rose to national prominence, such as President Barack Obama.
“This is the Table of Honor where we’re honoring our ancestors and notables,” said Lynn Collins of the Pullman Civic Organization.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.