Pullman Porters

A Pullman Porter, circa January 1943

I listened to the story of the African American Pullman Porters on NPR on the way to work this past week. It is another story of a niche in American history that could have remained untold.
George Pullman invented the sleeping car for trains in 1868 and in an act of racism, hired African American men who knew the "rules" of slavery, and would be excellent at the job of serving wealthy white travelers. But in this act of racism, he gave tens of thousands of African American men jobs that helped them earn and save money, and send their children to college to offer them a better life. It is a story full of ironies.

I was so intrigued by the different stories shared, and by some of the men and women who were descendants of Pullman Porters. Though they may have had to suffer indignities and racism while on the job, these men left behind a legacy in their children and grandchildren that impacted our society in such a positive way.

Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class
Listen Now [7 min 19 sec]

Morning Edition, May 7, 2009 · Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman porters — that distinctive and distinguished figure from yesteryear — the uniformed African-American train worker, who forged his way into the middle class.

As part of this year's National Train Day celebration on Saturday, Amtrak is honoring the legacy of Pullman porters in Philadelphia. The porters served first-class passengers traveling in the luxurious Pullman sleeping cars, and the safe, steady work that allowed tens of thousands of African-Americans access to middle-class life.

The legacy of Pullman porters is complex, author Larry Tye tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.
George Pullman, the entrepreneur who invented the sleeping car and began hiring porters for them in 1868, "was looking for people who had been trained to be the perfect servant, and these guys' backgrounds [were] as having been chattel slaves. He knew that they knew just how to take care of any whim that a customer had."

Tye, who wrote Rising from the Rails: The Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, says Pullman "knew they would come cheap, and he paid them next to nothing. And he knew that there was never a question off the train that you would be embarrassed by running into one of these Pullman porters and having them remember something you did that you didn't want your wife or husband, perhaps, to remember during that long trip."
Over time, the porters were able to combine their meager salaries with tips. They saved and put their children and grandchildren through college, which helped them attain middle-class status.

After decades of discrimination and abuse, the porters eventually organized in 1925 and became the first African-American labor union. The porters hired an outsider named A. Philip Randolph, who patiently fought for, and won, a collective bargaining agreement in 1937.
Randolph used his experience fighting the Pullman Company to help organize the civil rights movement. E.D. Nixon, a Pullman porter and leader of a local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, worked with one of his employees to help start the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama.

Nixon used Rosa Parks' arrest as a rallying cry to help organize the boycott. Because Nixon was often out of town attending to his duties as a porter, he enlisted the help of a young black minister new to Montgomery to run the boycott in his absence: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

As train service declined, and the civil rights movement grew, the number of Pullman porters dwindled.

article and photo courtesy of NPR.org

Read more...

Hope and Healing

The Today Show, shortly after the accident.

Stephanie Nielson is a survivor. In August of last year, she and her husband very nearly died in a private plane crash. Stephanie's blog, NieNie Dialogues was popular before the crash, so her many readers and other bloggers rallied for her, creating buttons for blogs and websites to raise money and alert everyone to her story.
That was how I found out about Stephanie, through other bloggers. I began to read her blog, post after post before the accident, to get to know her. Although she and I don't share the same faith or lifestyle, I felt a connection with her words, her humor, and her honesty.
The posts after the crash are heart wrenching. She and her husband both suffered severe burns, and rehabilitation, especially for Stephanie, has been grueling. Her face was burned badly, and she has endured surgeries and a great deal of pain in the process of healing.
Reading the posts after August, her words are raw and real, and so compelling. Her appearance has obviously changed, and reading that her own children were scared of her at times, made me hurt for her. As she writes of her insecurities about her appearance now, I can so understand how devastating that would be. Her words are soaked with the loss she feels, and her worries and trepidation about how she will find herself again.
She and her husband (she always refers to him as Mr. Neilson in her posts) have a strong marriage, and his support for her is amazing. She adores him, and that adoration oozes from every post. It is a great love story.
Her journey is one worth reading about. I am rooting for her, as I know so many readers are.
So many times I curse the internet for pop ups, spam, and lurking viruses. But like Matt Logelin's story, Stephanie's is one that makes me believe that cyberspace can be such a beautiful place. So many people reaching out, loving her without ever having met her, offering her support and encouragement, it heartens my faith in human beings. The ability for so many people to "circle the wagons" for others in far away places makes all the other things I curse seem obsolete.
It also makes me believe that out of tragedy can come unexpected kindness; a flood of support that can make those who have lost so much find hope. And hope is where the healing begins.

Check out Stephanie's blog here.

Read more...

Play Dead Bailey

A friend forwarded this to me, and I have laughed so hard at this, watching it several times. I love how Letterman can't stop laughing!

Read more...

Lost and Found

The real Nathaniel Ayers.

I have written before about learning so clearly that every homeless person has a story of how they lost their way, how they came to be where they are. In that posting, I wrote of hearing one man's story, and how it changed my view of all homeless people after that.

Last night, I saw the movie, The Soloist--a true story of a Los Angeles Times reporter who meets a homeless man playing the violin on the streets of LA, and learns the man was once a musical prodigy and had attended Julliard. As the reporter learns more and more about the man's life, he is drawn into helping him, and becomes his friend.

The real musician that is featured in this movie, Nathaniel Ayers, had an amazing future in front of him. By all accounts, he was gifted, a prodigy, and all those who taught him or played with him had no doubts about his future success. But while attending Julliard, schizophrenia set in, and Nathaniel's life was changed forever.

All of the actors are amazing in this movie. The reporter, Steve Lopez, is played by Robert Downey Jr. and Nathaniel is played by Jamie Foxx. There were moments watching Jamie play this man, when you could see him remembering all that he once was, all that he had lost, and it was heartbreaking.

What I didn't touch on in my last post was the frightening reality that so many people that are homeless are suffering from some form of serious mental illness, and are either undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or without family or resources. A large number of schizophrenics find their way too homelessness, because this horrifying disease leaves those who suffer from it in such turmoil about what reality is, most hear voices, and the ability to just survive in any way with schizophrenia becomes a victory.

The movie does a excellent job of putting you in Nathaniel's head and letting you understand first hand how frightening and tormenting this disease is. You FEEL the pain of losing your grip, not understanding what is happening to your mind, your body or your life.

I cried several times during the movie, and thought of all the homeless people out there, who once had normal lives, families, dreams and ambitions who are 'lost souls' that no one may ever discover or take the time to know. I think of the randomness of Steve Lopez meeting Nathaniel, and know that there must be other Nathaniel's out there.

The beauty of this story to me is: one person can make a difference. Nathaniel's life was changed, brightened, and made more beautiful by one man who wrote one story, and then could not walk away.

Please see this movie! Check out the official website here, where you can learn about the movie and also see the real Nathaniel and Steve being interviewed on video.

Read more...

Taken to Heart

How many times do we read about orphanages across the world and the terrible conditions and suffering children? How many times do we see commercials pleading with us to help the children? How many times do we volunteer with an organization and walk away thinking we wish we could do more?

I think the answer to all of these questions is "all the time", or at least it seems that way to me. I have written before about on of my favorite quotes, "Be the change you wish to see in the world". Student Amy Lambert has taken this challenge to heart. At only 24 years old, she has raised the funds to buy an orphanage in Africa, after volunteering there and seeing too much suffering and need first hand.

What if we all took action, however small, when seeing situations where help is needed? Imagine the impact. Imagine the change in the world, and the hope that would bring. Imagine the idea of taking action becoming contagious as people begin to see change taking shape.

I am so inspired by Amy, and hope that when she moves to Tanzania this July to begin running the orphanage, more people hear about her story and her success.

Student buys African orphanage
A student who visited a run-down African orphanage was so moved by the children's plight that she raised £30,000 to buy it.

The undergraduate at Bath Spa university raised more than £30,000 in just seven months
Amy Lambert, 24, set about gathering funds after witnessing the horrors at the decrepit Kichijo Orphanage in Tanzania.
She spent eight weeks volunteering there last summer, when she cared for 150 boys and girls - many of whom had lost one or both parents to AIDS and HIV.
Miss Lambert found children who were starving, dangerously dehydrated and sleeping in dirty beds.
The undergraduate at Bath Spa university raised more than £30,000 in just seven months.
But rather than passing the cash to authorities, she asked them if she offered to buy the orphanage instead.
Now she plans to complete her degree in Psychology and Health Studies this July before moving out to run the orphanage full time.
Miss Lambert of Pewsham, Wiltshire said: "These children are the most beautiful, selfless people I have ever met. I have never felt so helpless."
Her offer to buy the orphanage was accepted earlier this year and now plans to tear down the crumbling building and replace it with a modern one.
She also hopes to add a school room to educate the children and sew crops to teach them about self-sufficiency.

Anyone who would like to donate money towards Amy Lambert's orphanage should visit http://www.wearecollecting.co.uk

article and photo courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk

Read more...

For Luck

I remember my kindergarten teacher explaining to us that four-leaf clovers were rare and brought luck to those who found them. She let us spend time several afternoons searching the lawn behind our classroom for all the luck we could find. She then taught us to preserve them by pressing them in various books in the classroom.

Thus started a lifelong habit of mine, with me never being able to pass a patch of clover without scanning the green leaves for that rare four-leaf find. I also religiously pressed them in books just as Mrs. Starr had taught me to do. For years, I have also kept a framed four-leaf clover on my desk to remind me of the magic (and hope) of luck.

I love finding old books of mine, decades old, with dozens of lucky clovers pressed in the pages. I usually chose to only press them in my favorite books, journals, or books that had a special meaning to me, so finding these books always evokes a memory or emotion.

I got out of the habit of searching and finding for awhile while living in large apartment complexes where patches of anything green were hard to find. I might find one here or there when I was in another neighborhood, or at the park, but very few were pressed between the pages of any of my books for a few years.

Where I live now, the yard is covered in clover, with patches of grass in between. I can't go outside without searching, and remembering that as a child, I thought I had a special gift for finding four-leaf clovers. I loved that I could find them so quickly, it seemed as if my eye was drawn to the rare ones in the ocean of green.

Tonight as a storm loomed in the sky, a few raindrops began to fall. I knelt down next to a patch of clover, and sure enough, one with four leaves jumped out at me. I brought it inside, and pressed it in a reference book I use for my writing. There are dozens of clovers between those pages, hopefully working their magic to make my dreams come true.

From Wikipedia, here is a little history, legend, and a more clinical explanation of the four-leaf clover:

The four-leaf clover is an uncommon variation of the common, three-leaved clover. According to tradition, such leaves bring good luck to their finders, especially if found accidentally.[1] According to legend, each leaflet represents something: the first is for hope, the second is for faith, the third is for love, and the fourth is for luck. Another Irish legend tells that the three leaf clover, or "Shamrock", was what Saint Patrick used to represent the Holy Trinity. The name "four-leaf clover" is a misnomer: the clover leaf by definition consists of three leaflets. Clovers can have more than four leaflets: the most ever recorded is twenty-one,[2] a record set in June 2008 by the same man who held the prior record and the current Guinness World Record of eighteen.[3] Unofficial claims of discovery have ranged as high as twenty-seven.[2]
It has been estimated that there are approximately 10,000 three-leaf clovers for every four-leaf clover[4], however this probability has not deterred collectors who have reached records as high as 160,000 four-leaf clovers.[5] It is debated whether the fourth leaflet is caused genetically or environmentally. Its relative rarity suggests a possible recessive gene appearing at a low frequency. Alternatively, four-leaf clovers could be caused by somatic mutation or a developmental error of environmental causes. They could also be caused by the interaction of several genes that happen to segregate in the individual plant. It is possible all four explanations could apply to individual cases.

Read more...