Black porters’ union stood for those who excluded them

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2023 (1155 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS hosts of the One Great History podcast, Sabrina Janke and Alex Judge love exploring Winnipeg’s past. With Winnipeg’s sesquicentennial approaching, the two have produced a podcast series that explores the city’s colourful history. The series is presented through the lens of 15 historical figures, focusing on critical events surrounding their lives and their impact on Winnipeg. The series will conclude Nov. 9, the day when Winnipeg became a city 150 years ago. Summaries from each podcast will be republished in the Free Press. The podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and through the One Great History website — onegreathistory.wordpress.com

On May 20, 1919, John A. Robinson made his way to Union Station to let his bosses know the members of his union would not be reporting to work that day. Robinson and his cohort were not alone — the Winnipeg General Strike had kicked off five days earlier, and tens of thousands of workers had already walked off their jobs. But for the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the first Black-led unions in North America, the decision to walk in solidarity could not have been an easy one.

The role of a porter was an intense one. Porters had to show up hours early — unpaid — to make sure the cars were clean and polished, and the train was loaded with either wood or ice, depending on the season. A porter was fully in charge of his passengers’ experience: greeting and loading their luggage, serving food and drink, and even watching passengers’ unruly children.

It was also emotionally demanding: porters were frequently dismissed and mistreated, and many passengers called all porters “porter,” “boy” or most commonly “George.” Stanley Grizzle, a porter and author, wrote: “Some porters were a study in controlled anger during their work shifts, always angry. And they would simmer during those shifts — for this was a job where, every day, you were made to feel that you were beneath the passengers.”

The job did, however, have some cachet: porters got to travel, engage in conversations with people from across the country, and bring new books and fashions back home with them. Many porters used the steady wages of their work to open their own businesses. Porters created and shaped Black communities across North America, including in Winnipeg where many settled in the North End.

The status of sleeping-car porters changed for the worse with the advent of railway unions like the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees, which established whites-only membership clauses and excluded porters from their newly bargained contracts.

Worried that Black workers would demand their own contracts, railway companies began recruiting African-Americans and men from the West Indies, whom they believed would be more compliant than Black Canadians as a result of experiencing either Jim Crow or colonial rule. One such recruit was John A. Robinson, who came to Winnipeg with his wife and daughter to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1908. He would prove the companies’ assumptions about their “compliant” new recruits had been incorrect.

In 1916, Robinson and three other Black railway workers began meeting in secret to discuss the creation of a new union: the Order of Sleeping Car Porters. The following year, OSCP members went to the annual convention of the CBRE to force the issue of Black membership onto the agenda. After a fierce debate that nearly derailed the convention entirely, white union members dismissed the matter — and proceeded to a minstrel show for their evening’s entertainment.

So, at the onset of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919, Robinson and his cohort must have asked themselves whether this was their fight. In the past, the successes of white labour unions had not translated into progress for Black workers. Would they march alongside those who had actively excluded them, and who continued to do so? In the end, they did: the OSCP had been advocating since its creation for greater inclusion and solidarity, and in this spirit they threw in their lot with the strikers. There were reasons to be optimistic: the strike’s new brand of labour leaders were advocating for ideas like the One Big Union, which would include all workers.

Regarding the strike, Robinson wrote to the president of the CBRE that he and his fellow porters were “Men, knowing what we want, and capable of defending the benefits which should be obtained.”

This stand did not pay off for the leaders of the OSCP: porters lost their jobs, and the railway companies seemed particularly to target the leaders of the union. But even while the strike proceeded, Robinson was trying a new tack in front of the Board of Conciliation, arguing CP Rail was breaking rules on pay set by the Department of Labour. And the following year, he was once again at the CBRE’s annual convention arguing for Black inclusion — which they ultimately agreed to on a lesser, auxiliary basis. Black workers continued to be kept out of supervisory roles until the 1960s.

Though the strike itself may have been a blip in the history of the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, it is worth examining how stories like that of Robinson complicate narratives of the strike. White labour leaders are seen as heroes, and in many ways they were, but their successes often came at the expense of those were excluded until all too recently.