![]() ![]() ![]() In the case of John Henry, a “steel driving man,” he is memorialized for defeating a steam-powered machine in a test of strength and fortitude. The legend is the best-known black “tall tale,” honoring the achievements of an individual under difficult circumstances. But mostly, I celebrate… Because my father was a railroad man.Mid-Late 19th Century John Henry, about whom little is known, is a subject of legend and song, and may well have been a real person living in the late 19th century in West Virginia or Alabama. There are, of course, many reasons to celebrate the African American workers of the railroad. Percy Lee has fully recovered from immeasurable life threatening train derailment injuries.īecause when I rode the train as a child, I was, carefully and discreetly, watched over by and cared for by an entire staff of dining car waiters (as my dad was a waiter) cooks and porters, so gently that I never even realized it.īecause everyday children of African American workers in the 50s were served exquisite foods, on tables covered with imported linens, and set with real silver, fine china and pristine crystal.īecause the children of railroad workers were given travel and educational opportunities that would not otherwise have been possible and that contributed greatly to the creation of a powerfully political Black Middle Class.īecause railroad men had that really great walk that comes from walking miles on a moving train balanced perfectly with one foot on either side of the aisle.īecause the faces of the men from the car were always unbelievably smoothly shaven with just a hint of after-shave and the cool cool smell of train air conditioning.īecause the men of the yard and the station, as a local poet reminisces “worked hard, played hard and got up the next day and start all over again.”īecause railroad men are so tough, bad, good, great, romantic, courageous, funny and delightful that a computer search gives the titles of more than one thousand songs about trains.īecause folks would like to know that the popular Ballad of Casey Jones, noted at the beginning of the story, was written by his African American engine wiper Wallace Saunders. Thus the coining of the phrase.īecause African American railroad workers maintained grace in the face of spiteful Jim Crow Laws that required their families and others who looked like their families to move to the colored part of the train when it crossed over the Ohio River from Illinois into Kentucky.īecause the unionization of the Pullman Porters was a major civil rights milestone for the national labor movement and for all African Americans.īecause African American railroad workers carried the Chicago Defender back to Fulton KY and to Jackson TN so that in the darkness of the struggle folks could know there was still a northern light.īecause MalcomX and Thurgood Marshall and Gordon Parks got their start working for the railroad.īecause Fulton historian and former railroad cook, Mr. Even so, he managed to patent a train lubricating devise that was so coveted that substitutes were refused and only the “Real McCoy” was accepted. So for my father and for all of the, as mentioned in the Ballad, brave, noble and grand African American Railroad workers I celebrate you ….īecause African American railroad workers played a critical role with the Underground Railroad and the freeing of slaves.īecause African American slaves made up a significant part of the workforce that laid the first railroad tracks in the south.īecause folks would like to know that in the 1800s African American Elijah McCoy was trained as an engineer, but could only find work as a fireman shoveling coal. ![]()
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