{"id":1364,"date":"2004-01-27T03:39:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-27T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2012-05-22T16:17:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T22:17:19","slug":"1364","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1364","title":{"rendered":"His name’s not George (unless it really is)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although it is a bit off this blog’s stated purpose, I have published earlier (here<\/a> and here<\/a>) on the joy of transcontinental travel by Amtrak sleeping car.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I think of what were the glory days of train travel, when the Pullman Company owned the sleeping cars (leasing them to railroads) and hired the attendants — “porters,” as they were called then — freed black slaves at first, in the latter part of the 19th century.<\/p>\n

But the relationship between the porters and the company was far from simplistic. By 1925, the Pullman Company was the largest single employer of blacks in the nation, and the company’s involvement in communities as a good corporate citizen, especially its contributions to black churches, had bought it considerable goodwill among influential black leaders, particularly the ministers in the big churches in large cities. Well-placed advertisements in black newspapers helped as well. Recipients of the company’s largess were loath to call for organized opposition to their benefactor.<\/em><\/p>\n

They were paid less than white railway workers, of course, and they not only had to serve but to be subservient as well. Hence, in the 1920s, they struggled to unionize as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters<\/a>, a “craft union” that would eventually, in the 1930s, become part of the American Federation of Labor.<\/p>\n

For that story, you might look for a made-for-television (Showtime channel) movie, “10,000 Black Men Named George,” starring Andr? Braugher as organizer Philip Randolph and Mario Van Peebles as one of his associates. Charles S. Dutton’s character helps earn the film an “R” rating. Sure, it’s a TV movie and it’s a little two-dimensional and cleaned up, but how many such movies on labor history are there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although it is a bit off this blog’s stated purpose, I have published earlier (here and here) on the joy of transcontinental travel by Amtrak sleeping car. Sometimes I think of what were the glory days of train travel, when the Pullman Company owned the sleeping cars (leasing them to railroads) and hired the attendants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,13],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movies","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-1364","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1334,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1334","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":0},"title":"His name's not George (unless\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"His name's not George (unless it really is) Although it is a bit off this blog's stated purpose, I have published earlier (here and here) on the joy of transcontinental travel by Amtrak sleeping car. Sometimes I think of what were the glory days of train travel, when the Pullman\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":103,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=103","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":1},"title":"His name's not George (unless\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"His name's not George (unless it really is) Although it is a bit off this blog's stated purpose, I have published earlier (here and here) on the joy of transcontinental travel by Amtrak sleeping car. Sometimes I think of what were the glory days of train travel, when the Pullman\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1349,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1349","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":2},"title":"His name's not George (unless\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"His name's not George (unless it really is) Although it is a bit off this blog's stated purpose, I have published earlier (here and here) on the joy of transcontinental travel by Amtrak sleeping car. Sometimes I think of what were the glory days of train travel, when the Pullman\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3847,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3847","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":3},"title":"Wicca Work?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"M. drew my attention today to the fact that Rocky Mountain PBS (Motto: \"All Antiques Roadshow all the time.\") was offering another BBC-produced copy show, Wicca Work. Typical of RMPBS, they seem to be starting with the third season. CORRECTION: The series is New Tricks, the episode is \"Wicca Work.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11191,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11191","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":4},"title":"Call for Papers: American Academy of Religion’s Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The deadline is March 2nd. For general information, visit this site. Call for Proposal Contemporary Pagan Studies is an interdisciplinary Unit, and we welcome submissions of theoretically and analytically engaged papers and panels relating to modern Paganism and Polytheism, employing scholarly analysis to discuss the topic from any relevant methodology\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/AAR-logo.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/AAR-logo.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/AAR-logo.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9301,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9301","url_meta":{"origin":1364,"position":5},"title":"The Trip to Salem: Southern Colorado \u2014 Chicago","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The eastbound Southwest Chief, which originates in Los Angeles, rolls into La Junta, Colorado, at sunset. A near-miss in Chicago: the sleeping car attendant had lined up everyone's bags on the platform, which is a dimly lit. I found my carry-on bag, rolled it into Union Station, down the corridors\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4257,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}