The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: C.L. Dellums and the Fight for Fair Treatment and Civil Rights by Robert L. Allen (review)

So much has been written on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (bscp) that the question arises, do we really need another book about the bscp struggle for economic and social justice? Robert L. Allen’s book, which focuses on the life of C.L. Dellums and his leadership of the Oakland branch of the bscp, demonstrates that we do. The bscp reached from coast to coast and flourished as a labour movement in the vanguard of the larger Black freedom struggle for several decades. As a national story, the bscp challenge encapsulated the social, economic, and political influences that shaped America’s racial status quo during the early part of the 20th century. The campaign launched by the bscp on 25 August 1925 in New York City initially appeared to be limited to African Americans and Pullman porters in particular. Ultimately, however, the bscp’s challenge to the Pullman Company impacted all Americans, for the Brotherhood’s struggle was about much more than wages and working conditions. The porters who joined the bscp – at risk of losing their jobs – did so determined to gain full rights of first-class citizenship. The rendering of the bscp struggle on the West Cast through the life of C.L. Dellums provides an important outlook on the larger crusade undertaken by the bscp.

Under the leadership and guidance of Cottrell Laurence Dellums, or “C.L.” as he was widely known, the Oakland branch of the bscp nurtured a strong, dedicated group of Pullman porters who anchored the Brotherhood throughout its protracted struggle to form a union between 1925 and 1937. During the bscp’s darkest days when national memberships plummeted to 658 in 1933, the Oakland branch “maintained the highest dues-paying membership percentage-wise.” (66) The majority of Oakland porters were part of the first wave of migration in the 1920s and 1930s from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas to Oakland. Like Dellums, who was born in Texas in 1900, African Americans who migrated to the Pacific coast were drawn by reports of opportunities in California. Dellums moved to Oakland in 1923 hoping to attend the University of California and become a lawyer, a dream that was dashed as Dellums realized there were three ways “a black man could earn a living in the Bay Area: go to sea on ships, work on the railroads or engage in illegal activity.” (19) After a few months at sea, Dellums got a job as a Pullman porter in 1924.

By 1925 he was recruiting Oakland-based porters to join the fledging bscp, which had a committed division in Oakland under the leadership of Dad Moore and Dellums. The early success of the Oakland branch inspired the Pullman Company to try to destroy the union. Dellums responded by increasing his resolve to keep the Brotherhood alive. His resolve led the company to fire him, the Brotherhood to elect him as one of its vice presidents, and the Oakland division to name him its head after Dad Moore died in 1930. For the next 45 years, Dellums was in the vanguard of struggles for economic and social justice in the Bay Area as well as at the state and national level.

From the mid-1920s forward, while Dellums was organizing and leading the bscp, he was also a leader in the Alameda County (Oakland) County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp). Like A. Philip Randolph, head of the bscp, he always regarded the Brotherhood as a vehicle for removing economic and social barriers that kept African Americans in a second-class place. Eventually he was the naacp’s West Coast regional director, a position that paralleled that of his role as director of the West Coast division of the bscp. Both organizations were stronger as a result.

His skills as a strategist were legendary, a combination of militancy...