Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (review)

Melinda Chateauvert’s excellent book on the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), sets new standards for studies in labor history, women’s history, and African American society. In Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Chateauvert unearths an almost forgotten topic—black women in the BSCP—that historians have for too long ignored. By placing gender at the center of her analysis, Chateauvert asks new and provocative questions about the BSCP, the American labor movement, and African American culture on the eve of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Chateauvert carries out a chronological study of the BSCP, detailing its rise and its grievances against the Pullman company, the height of the BSCP’s power in the 1940s, and its eventual decline in the mid-1950s. This is familiar territory for historians. However, Chateauvert takes BSCP history to another dimension by analyzing the pivotal role played by the wives and sisters of the Pullman porters in building and sustaining the BSCP into the first national trade union for African Americans. In doing so Chateauvert implodes the public and private spheres of African American life, rendering the traditional distinctions between social and political/labor history impractical and simplistic.

Chateauvert seamlessly interweaves her gender analysis in each chapter. In focusing on key African American women, such as President Halena Wilson, the Black Worker newspaper, and women’s club meetings, she has produced a nuanced study that is sensitive to both time and locality. Chateauvert argues that racism, male trade union ideology, the notion of domesticity and the family, as well as the need for African American husbands and fathers to assert their masculinity, precluded women’s activities in the BSCP. Despite this, the Ladies’ Auxiliary organized and educated women in the importance of the union in their lives. What makes Chateauvert’s work inspiring are the voices of the women as the grass roots, which she highlights through her wonderful use of oral history, minutes of club meetings, and letters to the Black Worker. Chateauvert also delineates the various ideological viewpoints of the women in the auxiliary, the tensions between the older and younger generation, and the fact that Pullman porter wives were seen as working class by whites, but as middle class by African Americans. By illuminating the complexity of the various positions taken by women in the Auxiliary, in terms of organization, education, and the relationship between men and women within the movement and at home, Chateauvert makes clear the reciprocal relationship between the public and private sphere.

Chateauvert’s most stimulating chapters focus on the foundation and growth of the Ladies’ Auxiliary, and its quest for fair representation within the BSCP. The strength of character of the women, their organizational ability, and the time they devoted to the cause make this book compelling reading. In a key chapter on union wives and union families, Chateauvert pieces together the complex intersections of race, class, and gender within union households. She concludes: “The union wife used her position to expand the power of the trade union movement. She understood that the household budget came from union labor, and returned that money to labor.” (p. 138) Thus, union women purchased union-made commodities, set up co-operatives, and taught their children the value of work and the need for civil rights. However, as standards of living increased for BSCP’s families, tensions over class position eventually undermined the ability of the older, trade union-oriented members to recruit younger, civil rights-oriented women. Ultimately, Chateauvert argues: “The auxiliary, caught between politicized members interested in the civil rights movement and those enjoying the status of a high standard of living, failed to attract new members.” (p. 187) New organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality, and new leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., seemed to better address African American women’s concerns.

There is much to...