Speaker 1: Listen, black folks are the reason we have Labor Day
Speaker 1: as a holiday. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't get. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't get I didn't know. Maybe you didn't
Speaker 1: get I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Now I know y'all celebrate Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 1: It marks the end of Summerphores, But I had no
Speaker 1: clue how it originally started with the black Pullman porters
Speaker 1: and the black Pullman porters strike. See, many folks just
Speaker 1: like me didn't know about black pulman porter contributions. A
Speaker 1: lot of their contributions have been erased from Black American
Speaker 1: history altogether. I know, first you're asking what the hell
Speaker 1: is a pullman porter? But listen, during the heyday of
Speaker 1: railroad travel, you know those guys that got on the
Speaker 1: suits and the hats and they help you with your luggage,
Speaker 1: Well those are porters. Now, they were called Pullman porters
Speaker 1: because they worked for the Pullman Company, and the Pullman
Speaker 1: Company created the railroad cars. Now, there were white pullman porters,
Speaker 1: but the black Pullman porters were hired mainly because of
Speaker 1: their former slave backgrounds. The white man knew that they
Speaker 1: knew servitude and they were cheapersa hell because they were
Speaker 1: just coming out of slavery. Oh, and their servitude jobs
Speaker 1: consisted of babysitting, shining shoes, cleaning up after passengers, laundry making,
Speaker 1: bed cooking, you know the same things that they did
Speaker 1: pretty much on the plantations, fresh out of slavery, finally
Speaker 1: free with a job. You know, them black folks was
Speaker 1: working hard and they were dedicated like hell to their jobs.
Speaker 1: But they were underpaid, overworked, and they were constantly presented
Speaker 1: with racism at work. Now in the switch got flipped.
Speaker 1: The black workers wages was already low, but the Pullman
Speaker 1: company cut them lower, didn't reduce their rent or any
Speaker 1: other charges that blacks had who were already poor. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about nineties rapper on bad boy, label poor and
Speaker 1: fresh out of slavery. Man. When the workers tried to
Speaker 1: present their grievances to the president of Pullman Company, George M. Pullman,
Speaker 1: you know, to complain about the low wages, the poor
Speaker 1: living conditions, the sixteen hour work days, he refused to
Speaker 1: meet with them and fired all of them. After that,
Speaker 1: three thousand black railroad workers went rogue. They had a
Speaker 1: walk out protests sick of these little bit of checks man.
Speaker 1: That showdown between the American railroads and the Pullman company
Speaker 1: severely disrupted any rail traffic and service going on. And
Speaker 1: this went on for a little minute, got very violent,
Speaker 1: very physical, very bloody. The government's response was Congress creating
Speaker 1: the national holiday known today as Labor Day. Can you
Speaker 1: believe that? And once folks realized that, then black pullman
Speaker 1: porters were needed. Their pay also improved. Then the black
Speaker 1: folks got even smarter. Because the black porters were the
Speaker 1: ones who were traveling the country extensively. They were able
Speaker 1: to get news from different spots, developed ideas from different spots,
Speaker 1: and bring them back to their own communities. And then
Speaker 1: you think about it, then black pullman porters on these
Speaker 1: long train rides with these wealthy whites, that got a
Speaker 1: chance to see the clear differences between them white folks
Speaker 1: lives and then black pullman porters lives. They start getting smarter, investing,
Speaker 1: buying land, listening to the whites when they were serving them.
Speaker 1: You see, the pullman porters were trained on them plantations
Speaker 1: to mostly serve and never speak, to be seen and
Speaker 1: never heard. Many of the porters saved up money to
Speaker 1: send their children and their grandchildren to college, to buy homes,
Speaker 1: purchase land, start businesses back home, and digg it. When
Speaker 1: the black pullman porters sent their children and grandchildren to schools,
Speaker 1: many of them went on to become outstanding figures in
Speaker 1: totally different fields, from law like Supreme Court justice Third
Speaker 1: Good Marshal, to sports like Olympic track star Wilma Rudolph.
Speaker 1: Three thousand black railroad workers in eight invented the phrase
Speaker 1: find somebody else to do it, and Congress messed around
Speaker 1: and created Labor Day. Remember that when you're celebrating in September.
Speaker 1: Because I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.