The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
Pullman porters were men hired to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Most of these gandy dancers—the label applied to railway line workers who maintained railroad tracks and kept the rails straight—were African Americans who adapted the work call to railroad work.
ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. KORNWEIBEL: Well, the bad news is that the railroads themselves tended to discard personnel records but if you have a Pullman porter or a Pullman maid or a Pullman lounge car attendant in your family, the full Pullman employment records are in the Newbury Library in Chicago and you can trace their careers, you can see what they got demerits for, what they got commendations for, trace their pay trajectory, so a lot of great – and, of course, the runs that they were on so you could kind of trace their itineraries. Please Note: Library passes are not valid for special events or educational programs or classes. Information, download How did you happen, Ted, to take on this project? Are We on the Edge of the Economic Abyss? African Americans provided unparalleled service to railroad passengers and railroads like the B and O could not have been constructed or operated without the contributions of African-Americans. But despite the undeniable racism behind Pullman’s employment practices, he ended up giving advantages to people who desperately needed them. Did You Know NASA Has A Railroad? Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. So I think it’s very significant that the black artists recognized that the real core of the railroading experience was not the – those who served whites. Moulder takes a small pot of metal from tapped furnace to use on a small job, 1936. Or if you’d like to go online, post your comment at KPBS.org/thesedays. KORNWEIBEL: Completely out of her element. So a lot of the lines in California and Arizona and New Mexico, there were Indian laborers from various tribal peoples. He is SDSU emeritus professor of African-American history.
Welcome to These Days. 14 The Roaring Twenties came to a crashing halt with the Great Depression. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH (Host): I'm Maureen Cavanaugh, and you're listening to These Days on KPBS.
Working on the railroad was a low-paying but steady job with many positions that were nearly exclusively occupied by black workers. It was – the air brake was probably the single most important safety feature ever developed. CAVANAUGH: And if you would like to comment about anything that you hear on KPBS These Days, go to KPBS.org/thesedays and post your comment. To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.
The former director of the Frank Erwin Oral History Project in Austin, Sheree has written numerous publications on oral history and other topics. LC-USF33-011870-M4 (b film nitrate neg.) And I wondered if you had ever looked at western railroads, specifically California railroads, specifically Southern California railroads, and whether they were built by African-Americans in part, in whole, at all? [15:14] Audio/Video. Where there were Asians, Chinese up in the northwest, few blacks there as well because of the predominance of a group that could be well exploited. And the interesting thing is that the figures who are human figures who are portrayed in these paintings are not the Pullman porters, they are not the red caps, in other words, they are not figures who were familiar to whites, predominantly, but they were the figures who would’ve been unfamiliar, unseen by most whites. And we just – as a child, we used to go to Pennsylvania Station and see my grandfather working and look at all the locomotives and just – we were just thoroughly impressed.
CAVANAUGH: Let’s talk a little bit about George Pullman and these Pullman porters. It sounds like something I’d really enjoy. In addition to a big wage hike for porters, the agreement set a limit of 240 working hours a month. CAVANAUGH: I’m sorry, it’s between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. at Borders in Parkway Plaza in El Cajon.
KORNWEIBEL: When did you graduate from Prairie View? But some of the touching images are—and they’re posed images—of these maids with white children and entertaining them and showing them the scenery and so forth.
CAVANAUGH: …but what was the attraction of the railroads for freed slaves? They had to publish this in several pages in the next issue, some very laudatory but others saying this wasn’t really about railroading, this story about slaves working on the railroad. He knew that most Americans, even most middle class, upper middle class Americans, didn’t have personal servants in their homes.
Following the Civil War, the railroad was the most important industry that African Americans worked in. We’re taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727. There were some categories of work in which both slaves and free persons worked, like brakemen, like firemen stoking the firebox on a steam locomotive. A Pullman porter making up an upper berth aboard the "Capitol Limited" bound for Chicago, Illinois in 1944. + Subscribe to our podcasts. Armed with this knowledge, many porters saved up money to send their children and grandchildren through college and graduate school, giving them the education and opportunities they hadn’t had themselves. The Records of the National Mediation Board (RG 13) and the Records of the U.S. Railroad Administration (RG 14) document the efforts of African American railroad workers and their unions to procure satisfactory compensation and job security. The image of African-American Pullman porters was ubiquitous in American culture at the turn of the 20th century and even appeared in children's toys like this one. Rosalyn is calling us from Point Loma.
The image of the African-American railroad worker is a staple in the cultural history of America. I wanted to ask a couple of questions specifically about railroading in Southern California and the African-American presence here. Keep up with all the latest news, arts and culture, and TV highlights from KPBS. Kelvin is calling us from San Diego. And, of course, I saw my grandfather every day come home from work. World War I set the stage in 1918 for significant changes for the lives of black railroad workers.
ALLISON (Caller, San Diego): Hi. What is the Austrian School of Economics.
How were trains actually stopped before automatic air brakes? In the lead-up to the ...read more, A. Philip Randolph was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement.
KELVIN (Caller, San Diego): How’re you doing? Thank you so much. KORNWEIBEL: Talking about the 18 – 1858, ’59, shortly before the Civil War. It would’ve been unusual because there were other exploitable labor sources much closer than tapping the distant south. Now when automatic couplers came in and air brakes, those jobs became more attractive to whites and so at that point in history, early 20th century, whites began to push blacks out of those occupations.
ALLISON: …such a strong memory that I didn’t think about it.
CAVANAUGH: You have African-American workers working on the tracks, you have them as porters, you have even photographs of African-American nannies on the train taking care of children while, you know, as part of their duties as being nannies to the children themselves.
Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. The only woman there, isolated, vulnerable, and that was…. George Pullman pioneered luxurious sleeping-car accommodations on trains, and part of the experience was being served by a humble, uniformed porter.
1949. Smithsonian, December 11, 2013, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/pullman-porters.
KORNWEIBEL: Oh, well, that was several decades after my time there.
The work, especially laying track through rough terrain and tunnels, was hard and was done manually using shovels, picks, axes, black powder, wheelbarrows, ropes, mules, and horses. The railroads were the best—in the south—were the best alternative to escaping two worse fates, either agriculture which often meant sharecropping, which meant you were in debt year after year after year, or domestic service. These are not peripheral artists but important black artists like John Biggers, like Jacob Lawrence. They would list the expenses. From the 2009 ASC Panel: Economic Freedom. To stop a train, brakemen would turn a wheel on each individual car to apply brakes on that car. KELVIN: And one of my uncles presently is an engineer on the Kansas City Southern Line. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian ...read more, Historically, black women in sports faced double discrimination due to their gender and race. KORNWEIBEL: And she had been accustomed, according – actually to domestic work so she probably was a cook because that’s what she was later put to. It should win a design award.
Now you mentioned something that also I found extremely interesting, that these so-called hired slaves were working on the railroad side by side by laborers who were being paid for their work on the railroad.
