#OnThisDay August 25, 1925, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African American labor union, was founded.
Asa (A.) Philip Randolph, who founded the Black Socialist publication The Messenger and would orchestrate the ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’ in 1963, felt strongly about the plight of the Pullman Porters during the 1920s. He proclaimed that the Pullman Porter was made “to carry out the gospel of unionism in the colored world. His home is everywhere.” After publishing “The Case of the Pullman Porter” in 1925 to garner public support, he formed an organizing committee and orchestrated a mass meeting of 500 Pullman Porters to set forth a list of demands addressing the economic exploitation and discrimination of Pullman Workers.
The next day over 200 Porters came to The Messenger’s offices to join the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and by the end of the month nearly all Sleeping Car Porters in New York had joined the newly formed union. The union set out to organize throughout the country, setting up divisions in cities throughout the country.
By 1935, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under Randolph became the first African-American union in the country to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The BSCP went on to defeat the Pullman Company’s union, gaining union recognition from the anti-labor Pullman Company, and eventually securing an international charter as the union expanded into Canada.
This collage of images from the union’s publication ‘The Black Worker’ features editorial depictions of Black workers in triumphant stances emanating strength and power, challenging the racist Jim Crow depictions of African-American workers in the twentieth century iconography from publications such as the Pullman Company's publication 'The Pullman News'. Images from one of our previous exhibitions, “The Other Side of the Tracks: Social Mobility and Discrimination in the Railroad Industry.”
