The Brotherhood of Sleeping

Car Porters was the first national trade union for African Americans.

Standard BSCP histories focus on the men who built the union; few acknowledge

the important role of the Ladies' Auxiliary in shaping public debates

over black manhood and unionization, setting political agendas for the

black community, and crafting effective strategies to win racial and economic

justice.

The Ladies' Auxiliary, made

up of the wives, daughters, and sisters of Pullman porters, used the Brotherhood

to claim respectability and citizenship. Pullman maids, relegated to the

auxiliary, found their problems as working women neglected in favor of

the rhetoric of racial solidarity. The auxiliary actively educated other

women and children about the labor movement, staged consumer protests,

and organized local and national civil rights campaigns ranging from the

1941 March on Washington to school integration to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A volume in the series

Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor Scott, Nancy A. Hewitt,

and Stephanie Shaw, and in the series The Working Class in American History,

edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean

Wilentz