Pullman porters hauled more than luggage
Thomas Burrell spent 40 years riding the rails as a Pullman porter, often working long hours for low wages, enduring racial slurs and strict work rules that prohibited frowning or discussing politics.
Burrell didn't talk much about his experiences with his family, but did pass on his interest in trains to his grandson, KDKA reporter Harold Hayes.
"I proposed to my wife on the Broadway Limited just outside Harrisburg," Hayes said. "I still have some train in me."
For 13 years, Burrell made the run from Pittsburgh to Detroit on the Pennsylvania Railroad. He earned about $3,200 in wages and $700 in tips in 1950, Hayes said. Burrell was able to build a house in Beltzhoover on those wages and send his daughter, Gladys Burrell Hayes, to Howard University.
The black Pullman porters tended to the needs of passengers aboard Pullman sleeping cars. They often worked double shifts, hauling luggage, shining shoes or ironing suits. They baby-sat children, delivered trays of food and tended the sick in order to get tips.
In their heyday during the early part of the 20th century, Pullman porters were the largest group of employed blacks in America, numbering more than 20,000. They organized into the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph in 1925.
Amtrak is trying to locate surviving porters for a tribute planned for National Train Day in Philadelphia on May 9.
It is a tough task. Many are dead.
Born in 1885 in Culpeper, Va., Burrell might have lied about his age to get hired by the railroad, Hayes said. His grandfather died in 1974.
Working conditions on the trains were difficult. The porters often worked 400 hours a month or 11,000 miles — sometimes as much as 20 hours at a stretch. In 1926, they earned on average $810 a year.
Wister Adams, who spent 30 to 40 years as a Pullman porter, "walked" to California and back during cross-country runs, said his grandson, Harvey Adams Jr., a former Pittsburgh Housing Authority police chief and longtime head of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP.
"There was no rest. They were getting up and down at all hours," he said.
The porters helped make The Pittsburgh Courier the most widely distributed black newspaper in the country, peaking at about 450,000 in the 1940s and 1950s.
Then, Northern newspapers shipped to the South were collected and burned. The Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender struck a deal with the porters to take their newspapers South, where ministers distributed them, said Rod Doss, editor and publisher of the New Pittsburgh Courier.
"We owe a lot to the Pullman porters," Doss said.
Amtrak has conducted three ceremonies to honor the Pullman porters in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Oakland but each drew fewer and fewer porters.
"It got tougher and tougher to find the porters. It just got very difficult," said Hank Ernest, a senior account supervisor for Images USA, the public relations firm working with Amtrak on the project.
In 1963, Randolph was among civil rights leaders who marched in Washington, an event that young Harold Hayes watched with his family. When his grandfather saw Randolph marching, he told Hayes the impact Randolph had on their family.
"He was giving me a history lesson. That meant something," Hayes said.
Additional Information:
Contact
For information about the Pullman porters tribute, contact Amtrak by calling Saunya Connelly at 202-906-4164 or e-mailing her at connels@amtrak.com . Those responding will need to provide the porter's full name, telephone number, mailing address, age, years of railroad service, and routes, if known. Deadline to respond is April 14.
