Description

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The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was the first national trade union for African Americans. Standard BSCP histories focus on the men who built the union. Yet the union's Ladies' Auxiliary played an essential role 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. 

Melinda Chateauvert explores the history of the Ladies' Auxiliary and the wives, daughters, and sisters of Pullman porters who made up its membership and used the union to claim respectability and citizenship. As she shows, 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. Chateauvert also sheds light on the plight of Pullman maids, who—relegated to the Auxiliary—found their problems as working women neglected in favor of the rhetoric of racial solidarity.

About the Author

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Melinda Chateauvert is an activist and historian located in New Orleans and Washington, DC. She is the author of Sex Workers Unite! A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk.

Praise For…

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"A remarkably nuanced portrait of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. . . . Chateauvert unearths and dissects this story through impressive research and keen understanding."--Walter Licht, author of Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century