Honoring men who crossed America — and changed it

It's been 65 years since Troy Walker got hired as a dining-car waiter on the Santa Fe Railway, but he readily recalls a few things he loved about the job: the steady, clean work; the excitement of seeing new places, meeting new people — and the French toast the railroad cooks made for breakfast.

"That was one of their specialties," said Walker, 90, who lives in the Rainier Beach area. "They'd start it the night before. I'm not sure how they made it, but it was very good."

He remembers a downside, too. Being prohibited, because of his race, from even applying for some of the more prestigious jobs on the train, such as steward or supervisor. Hearing occasional muttered insults from passengers. And having to stay in separate hotels from the white members of the crew.

"I hoped things would change, but I really didn't think they would," said Walker, an African-American.

Change they did, though, in large part due to the efforts of Walker and his co-workers. That's why he and another Seattle man, Thomas H. Gray, 71, will board a southbound train Sunday — courtesy of Amtrak — for an event the rail agency is holding Tuesday in Oakland, Calif., to honor railroad porters of yesteryear as part of Black History Month.

"These gentlemen worked during a time when the service they provided was top-notch under difficult and stressful circumstances," said Amtrak spokeswoman Darlene Abubakar. "This is an opportunity to celebrate them and what they achieved."

Not many Americans fully understand the significance the country's railroads played in the history of African Americans, and vice versa.

As early as the 1830s, slaves worked on the construction of rail lines in the South, and in the years after the Civil War, newly freed slaves made up a ready labor pool for the railroads.

The nation's westward expansion, and the development of the Pullman sleeping car in the 1860s, helped boost African Americans' role. By the 1920s, more than 20,000 African Americans worked on the railroads, according to the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum in Chicago.

Randolph, the museum's namesake, founded the nearly all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. Although it took 12 years of struggle for the union to gain recognition by The Pullman Co., it became the first African-American union to sign a collective-bargaining agreement with a major U.S. company.

Randolph remained a lifelong advocate for black workers, and when he was in his 70s, he led a march on Washington in 1963 that helped prompt passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Besides providing jobs, railroads brought African Americans to every corner of the country; their importance as employers and conduits of travel is told in a display at Seattle's Northwest African American Museum.

Although Walker did not work on Pullman cars, he and other black workers benefitted from union achievements in hours and working conditions. Walker worked long days on the railroad, but he got time off in Los Angeles between runs to and from Kansas City.

"The pay wasn't much, but the tips were good," said Walker, who remembers working for $80 a month, but sometimes getting a $2 tip from satisfied diners — the equivalent of some $20 today.

Still, it wasn't until after Amtrak took over the railroad in 1971 that Walker gained a supervisory position he'd long hoped for. In 1982, three years after his transfer to Seattle, Walker retired as an onboard supervisor, a position of responsibility over a train's sleeping cars, coaches, lounge and dining cars.

Walker and Gray will be among five former railroad workers honored in Oakland in the last of three such events held nationally, recognizing the dwindling number of workers still alive from the railroads' heyday before World War II and the boom in air travel. Nine workers were honored last year in similar events in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Gray, a retired Boeing engineer, calls himself a "reluctant honoree," noting he only worked for the railroads as a "chair-car attendant" in the summers during college. But his late father, Thomas J. Gray, of Chicago, and grandfather, Henry Jones, of Albuquerque, N.M., were members of the Pullman Porters union, each with more than 35 years of service.

Among Gray's favorite railroad memories are the times he passed — going the opposite direction — a train his grandfather was on. "We knew if our two trains would be passing, so he'd hold his railroad lantern and I'd hold my flashlight. At 70 miles an hour, we couldn't see one another, but we knew who was holding the light."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com