Their job was to lug baggage, shine shoes, set up and clean the sleeping berths and serve passengers. Just as all of his specially trained conductors were white, Pullman recruited only Black men, many of them from the former slave states in the South, to work as porters. The first Pullman porter began working aboard the sleeper cars around 1867, and quickly became a fixture of the company’s sought-after traveling experience. These more comfortable, luxurious sleeping cars were an instant hit, affording wealthier passengers the amenities they were accustomed to at home and allowing middle-class travelers to enjoy a taste of the good life. Louis Railroad to let him convert two old passenger cars into new and improved sleepers. In 1859, as the railroads were expanding their reach across America, Pullman convinced the Chicago, Alton and St. While they were underpaid and overworked and endured constant racism on the job, the Pullman porters would eventually help to fuel the Great Migration, shape a new Black middle class and launch the civil rights movement. Pullman began hiring thousands of African American men-including many former slaves-to serve white passengers traveling across the country on his company’s luxury railroad sleeping cars. Just a few years after the Civil War, the Chicago businessman George M.
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