The Brotherhood In its early work in organizingPullman portersand maids, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Portersdrew on the effortsof many of Chicago'ssocialactivists, such as Irene McCoy Gaines,Mary McDowell,and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Beth Tompkins Bates
SLEEPING CAR
PORfERS The stationeryof the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters borea simplerepresentationof a po1terstanding on duty at the station platform. Beth Tompkins Bates is a doctoralcandidatein American hist01yat ColumbiaUniversity.
In 192 5, the Brotherhood or Sleep in g Car Porters (BSCP), a union recently formed in New York City, began organi;,ing Pullman lee ping car porters and maids on Ch icago's South Side. The principal target or the BSCP was the Employee Representation Plan, a union created by the Pullman Company [or its porters and maids. The Brotherhood said the porters and maids needed the BSCP because it would represent their int erests, not those of the Pullman Company. BSCP organizers soon discovered , however, that before they cou ld repre enc the interests of porters and maids, they had to gain recognition and support from the middle-class black community on the South Side of Chicago. 1ot only did this e lite dislike labor unions, but the majority regarded the Pullman Company as a friend of black Chicagoans. Since the black middle class controlled institutions in the black community such as the press and larger churches, their opinion mattered. The Pullman Company started performing "good works" and pouring money into the black community on the South Side during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Florence Pullman , daughter of George Pullman, founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company, contributed a large sum of money to help found Provident Hospital in 1891 . The country' first interracial ho pita! , Provident not only received black citi,ens on an equal basis with whites, but both its advisory board and medical staff were interracial, giving the black neighborhood unprecedented control over health care. Florence Pullman continued to make contributions during the hospital's periodic tough times. In 1896, George Pullman and Marshall Field purchased land adjo inin g Provident Ho pita! for a nursing