Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The parking lot of the U.S. Post Office at 517 Wood Street was the location of the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.This was the brotherhood's first West Coast headquarters. The Pullman Porters' labor union was organized by A. Philip Randolph, its first president, and C. L. Dellums, its vice president. Dellums (the uncle of U.S. Representative Ron Dellums) was, also the union's Pacific Coast Supervisor and maintained an office at this site. The brotherhood was created August 25, 1925 as a union for Pullman porters and maids, and was the first Afro-American labor organization to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor. The union functioned as an advocate for Black men and women employed by the Pullman Company on its sleeping cars leased to and operated by various railroad companies throughout the United States.
As part of the first campaign, the brotherhood demanded improved wages and better working conditions. On September 7, 1927, the brotherhood filed a case with the Interstate Commerce Commission, requesting an investigation of Pullman rates, porters' wages, tipping practices, and other matters related to wages and working conditions. From its inception, the union maintained a West Coast office in Oakland, under supervision of its vice president. Through the union's concerted efforts during the early years, Afro-Americans acquired control of Pullman porters' and dining car workers' positions throughout the railroad system. These positions (until the 1960s, when civil rights legislation set aside some long-standing discriminatory employment practices) were among the best available to Black male blue-collar workers.
Labor reformer and unionist Asa Philip Randolph, one of many influential African Americans who lived at the Dunbar Apartments, battled racism in American industry. He also is well-known for spearheading the 1963 March on Washington DC which ended at the Lincoln Memorial. The apartment complex, constructed in 1926, consists of ten u-shaped buildings centered around an interior garden courtyard which allowed air and light to reach each apartment. The Dunbar Apartments, the first large garden complex in Manhattan, contained a nursery school, playground, retail stores, and a branch of the Dunbar National Bank, Harlem's first bank to be managed and staffed by African Americans.
As a labor leader championing equality for Pullman's railroad porters, Randolph spoke before 500 Pullman porters who had met secretly in 1925 in order to avoid their employer's notorious unionization busting. Later that year, as a result of the meeting, Randolph helped organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. For 12 years, the union persevered despite merciless opposition from the Pullman Company and, in 1937, Randolph and the porters prevailed. Forced to the bargaining table, the Pullman Company signed the first-ever contract with a black union. As a result, Randolph stepped into the national arena. To end the exclusion of blacks from the defense industry, he threatened a march on Washington in 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt subsequently issued an executive order outlawing discrimination in the hiring of defense industry and government employees. The order also established the Committee on Fair Employment Practice. President Harry Truman signed an executive order seven years later, at the insistence of Randolph, which ended racial segregation in the military. By the 1950s, civil rights leaders recognized Randolph, the first African American vice-president of the American Federation of Labor, as an elder statesman, and in that role he organized the Washington, D.C., youth marches, Prayer Pilgrimage and 1963 march.
The Dunbar Apartments, where Randolph once lived, were financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr, and were "the first large cooperative built for Blacks," according to the New York City Landmarks Commission, and "it was a prototype structure for both the public housing projects of the Depression years and for later middle-income housing." Other prominent African Americans who lived at the Dunbar Apartments included W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Arctic explorer Matthew Henson.
Public domain text from http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5views/5views2h20.htm and http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ny2.htm
External link
Remembrances of C.L Dellums by Ron Dellums
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