george pullman is the landlord of the place that you live. pullman is the boss of the place that you work. pullman owns the church in which he want u.s you to worship with other faiths and denominations and faiths and people got fed up really, really quickly and they began to organize. with that organization, you get the formation of the american rail way union right before the pullman strike. pullman's stories -- they are the convergence of labor and civil rights. it has a very unique role in american history. that convergence of labor and civil rights also creates a divergence. from the formation of these largely white unions to the question of afric around americaafrica african-americans around the country to say what about us? what are the protections that we have? we work 12 hour days on trains going from chicago to new orleans and stopping in memphis. what about us? soon we begin to have the conversations about what is the role of the african-american in a union. we've learned that it wasn't its earliest supporter. so pullman tells an in

in 1879, george pullman purchased 18 acres of land, 14 miles south of downtown chicago. it was the heart of chicago even then. to build his manufacturing town, to make the pullman palace car cabinet. for all of those thousands of pullman palace railcars, sleeping cars that crisscross the country, the majority of them were made in chicago. george pullman said no. i want my company to be a modern company. i want my company to manufacture the best products in the coountry and we can take care of our employees at the same time. he built it on the southside of chicago. less than a year later, people were moving in. the workers lived with the managers. the managers live the near the executives. it was one happy place, the happiest town in the world. [laughter] for about three years. after that, the paternalistic nature of george pullman begins to take effect. it had arctic been there since he built homes for his children at that point. it begins to affect people. the economic recession happens and you have george pullman not doing anything to help the people of his town. george

in chicago, for example, if something is named, the pullman historic sight versus being named george pullman brotherhood sleeping national park, then it sounds excluesive, where the sleeping carporters had no significant role. and so do what you can to put them in there. >> right. >> you can't just call it pullman. he was great in a sense of a significant person. once i found out about him i took my children to the pullman museum and to the sleeper carporter museum and that will only become important if both segments of that population are important. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. [ cheers and applause ] >> young person. >> i am not a millennial. i'm a generation x i'd rather you refer to me as a philadelphia eagles fan. i have a question in reference to all of the porters. it has always been my understanding that moeflt st of were men that may have gone to college and came out and for many reasons they aren't able do anything else. so is it possible that because it is this group of educated men, that many of them are educated men and then are marrying women attempting to asimulate t

pullman -- george pullman was the fellow who developed and built the pullman railroad cars, which was the very great luxury railroad cars that you could sleep in. i was fortunate enough as a kid, i remember, to sleep in a pullman on the 20th century limited going between chicago and new york. and you know, they were the height of luxury. and he created a town outside -- just outside chicago, which he called, modestly enough, pullman. and it created a kind of -- a classic company town, where people had to -- you know, it was quite nice, quite nice housing. but people had to live in the housing. people had to shop at the pullman stores. and there was a -- considerable economic downturn in the late 1890s, and he started cutting back the salaries of the pullman workers, but he didn't cut back the rent or the cost of food that all these people -- so as a result, when they deducted all of that before they'd give people the paycheck, these guys sometimes ended up owing money, or if they got any money, it was just, you know, pennies. and so they decided they were going to strike. and it happe