When A. Philip Randolph assumed the leadership of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, he began a ten-year
battle to win recognition from the Pullman Company, the
largest private employer of Black people in the United
(5) States and the company that controlled the railroad
industry’s sleeping car and parlor service. In 1935 the
Brotherhood became the first Black union recognized by a
major corporation. Randolph’s efforts in the battle helped
transform. the attitude of Black workers toward unions and
(10) toward themselves as an identifiable group; eventually,
Randolph helped to weaken organized labor’s antagonism
toward Black workers.
In the Pullman contest Randolph faced formidable
obstacles. The first was Black workers’ understandable
( 15) skepticism toward unions, which had historically barred
Black workers from membership. An additional obstacle
was the union that Pullman itself had formed, which
weakened support among Black workers for an
independent entity.
(20) The Brotherhood possessed a number of advantages,
however, including Randolph’s own tactical abilities. In
1928 he took the bold step of threatening a strike against
Pullman. Such a threat, on a national scale, under Black
leadership, helped replace the stereotype of the Black
(25)worker as servant with the image of the Black worker as
wage earner. In addition, the porters’ very isolation aided
the Brotherhood. Porters were scattered throughout the
country, sleeping in dormitories in Black communities;
their segregated life protected the union’s internal
(30) communications from interception. That the porters were a
homogeneous group working for a single employer with
single labor policy, thus sharing the same grievances from
city to city, also strengthened the Brotherhood and encour-