10,000 Black Men Named George

George Pullman seems to have been a bit of a progressive, at least at first, for his day. (Never mind that Pullman strike nastiness in 1894.) The country was filled with ex-slaves with no jobs, so he decided to hire Negroes, and only Negroes, as porters on his Pullman cars. He figured they’d work hard, and they already had subservience down cold. And they did. But by 1925 there was a lot of dissatisfaction with poor working conditions, low pay, and lack of respect. A union was organized to go up against the company union. There were labor laws by then, though they’d never done Negroes any good, but sending in large numbers of goons or troops was not a real option. Still, there was a lot of nastiness against the top union men, like Philip Randolph, and the rank and file. But you know they will prevail, and they do. This movie was originally on Showtime. It’s competent, earnest, has its heart in the right place, and is pretty dull. About the most interesting thing about it is a supporting role by Brock Peters, who I thought was dead. Turns out he is. He only lived three years after making this.

Bemused aside: There is a scene when Randolph is in Chicago and gets a phone call from his wife, in New York. His mother has died. He is in a room full of people talking, she is at their apartment. They talk quietly for a while, almost whispering. There are long silences. They take their time. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Almost everything about the scene is wrong. I’m sure a lot of screenwriters in this age when some countries have more cell phones than population (many folks have two) don’t recall the days as recently as the 1960s when a call across the country was a big deal! I remember people would lean out the back door and shout “Long distance!” and the person called would come running. For one thing, it was very likely bad news, so Randolph would have already suspected the worst. Plus, it cost real money! Person-to-person cost even more than station-to-station, if any of you are young enough to remember those terms. Only guys like Rockefeller got long-distance calls every day, and kept others waiting on the line. When those magic words were yelled, the room would have fallen silent. And a good thing, too, because there would be a good chance that Randolph would be barely able to hear his wife on the other end. People shouted into the phone when the call was coming from across the country. They shouted even when they didn’t have to, reflexively. And they got their business over fast, because there was a good chance the caller didn’t have any more change. So I doubt Mrs. Randolph would have been placing the call from her apartment in the first place. It had been made clear they were nearly penniless. I see her down at the drugstore waiting for the operator to put her through, anxiously counting her nickels to see how many seconds she has.

Ah, phone nostalgia. I guess today’s generation will look back in wonder at how they managed to carry around these huge, heavy, non-implantable phones with no 3D projection. For me, it’s remembering when area codes first arrived. And prefixes. Any of you remember those? PEnnsylvania 6-5000? Our was RAndolph. I can’t remember our own number, but my best friend’s was RA 2-8591. In my grandparent’s town you didn’t even need 7 digits, 5 would do you. Granddaddy’s was 48512. Uncle Billy’s was … but wait, better not write that one down, he probably still has the same number, 50 years later! And rotary dials, some of you may remember those. And no, I do not recall having to hold the mouthpiece in one hand and the earpiece in the other. How old do you think I am? But I do recall the introduction of the Princess phone, which came in colors other than black …