Porter talk: Episode 5

• Transcript of “The Women Who Stood With Porters” - Episode 5

  Richard Provencher (RP): This episode contains offensive and potentially harmful language that refers to Black communities in Canada. Some of the stories that are shared also include vivid descriptions of physical and verbal violence that may be difficult for some listeners to hear.

  Discover Library and Archives Canada presents “Porter Talk.” This production explores the lived experiences of Black men who laboured as sleeping car porters for both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways during the twentieth century. Their voices, along with those of their wives and children, relay stories of both hardship and resilience.

  This is the first season of Voices Revealed, a series that amplifies the voices of underrepresented and marginalized communities held within Library and Archives Canada’s vast oral history holdings. Narratives of injustice, conflict, persistence, and resolution enable us to understand how the past powerfully defines our present. They also provide compelling insights that push us to imagine new directions for our collective future. My name is Richard Provencher and, as your host of the first season of Voices Revealed, I am pleased to guide you through the stories that are at the heart of “Porter Talk.”

  Female Interviewer: For instance, did you find that, uh, um, the wives of the, uh, of the- of the railway men had a tendency to-to join together, to-to have activities together?

  Female Interviewer 2: I think we did, to a certain extent. We’d get on the telephone, talk shop about [sighs] our, uh, circumstances. I would say yes, we do.

  Female Interviewer: Whe-whe-when, uh, when-when children, uh, came along, did this make, uh, um, a big difference ...

  Female Interviewer 3: Well, yes, it did. Uh, you more or less had to bring them up yourself … Because you were left alone quite a bit. And this is one part of the railroad I didn’t like … Very lonely life for the wife. No-no participation, uh, between the children and the father and the mother because the father was away so much … You know, the Vancouver run was ten days and in on the eleventh and then the layover wasn’t that lengthy at the time, it was only about four days and then back out again. So you were pretty well left alone-

  Female Interviewer: Um, how—

  Female Interviewer 3: -with the children.

  Female Interviewer: Yeah. How could you arrange about special days, say like Christmas and, uh, and birthdays and that kind of thing?

  Female Interviewer 2: That was almost impossible because you never know just where your husband would be.

  Female Interviewer: Mm. Uh, suppose when Christmas came and he was out, would you hold Christmas after?

  Female Interviewer 3: Yes. We usually waited until he came in and then, uh, whatever that day would be, we’d celebrate Christmas on that day, whether it was three days after, [chuckles] four days after, we’d have our Christmas um, dinner.

  Female Interviewer 2: I-I, uh, perhaps the only woman who, real good wives who would, um, not mind it would be those who had like, uh, sisters, you know, sisters, um, or cousins and the-they could band together a little more easily than friends, while the husbands were out. But, um, i-it was too lonely a life, I should say. And then, uh, with the men being away, you’d lose communication with them and there wasn’t the closeness. It wasn’t the, uh, you know, they’d come in and they were strangers … And by the time you’d- you’d sort of break down the barriers, get to know each other again, they’re off again … So, um, I don’t think it was conducive to family life at all. Probably the breakup of many a marriage …

  Female Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Um, what-what about the children, how did you feel that they reacted to this kind of family relationship?

  Female Interviewer 2: Well I guess they always thought mother was the big bear and daddy was the- was the good guy that came in the two to three days of the- to coddle them, you know.

  Philip: Mm. Strike that. [laughter]

  Female Interviewer 2: What? Don’t strike it. [laughter]

  Female Interviewer: It certainly made the women, certainly more self-reliant though, didn’t it? If you had the decisions to make and, uh—

  Female Interviewer 3: That’s true.

  Female Interviewer 2: Yeah, make us self-reliant, but then the man would come in and he’d resent it. ‘Cause he’d want to be the man of the house, you see? So there was friction there.

  Female Interviewer: Oh.

  Female Interviewer 2: He would feel that the woman was sort of, you know, uh, takin’ over his position … ‘Cause she had- we continually had to play like two roles.

  Female Interviewer 3: Yes.

  Female Interviewer 2: All the time.

  Female Interviewer 3: All the time.

  Female Interviewer 1: All the time.

  Richard Provencher (RP): In the group interview we just listened to from Stanley G. Grizzle’s collection, the women, whose names we do not know, tell us how important friendship and solidarity were for coping with the stresses that went hand in hand with their husbands’ demanding schedules. They leaned hard on each other and family members to manage their households, raise children, deal with strained marital relationships, and remedy loneliness.

  Portering, and the anti-Black racism that rooted it, tore at the intricate connections that held Black families together. Each decision that wives made while their husbands were on the rails, chipped away at the traditional power dynamics that ordered the home. Every major milestone that fathers missed while attending to their passengers’ needs, served as solemn reminders of the intangible costs that came with a steady pay cheque.

  Porters’ fleeting presence at home left many questioning both their masculinity and their role in the family. Time and distance made for strangers on both sides of the threshold. While some railway families forged ahead amidst seemingly insurmountable barriers, others could not. Many marriages faltered; others ended.

  Women recognized that their fractured homes reflected the deeper challenges they faced in society and did not want to pass on these lived realities to their children. As a result, many rolled up their sleeves and got to work creating a more progressive and just future. As they weaved together the loose ends of their personal lives, women also held up their communities by founding and sustaining a range of organizations, religious or otherwise. Their voluntarism sparked a slow but steady revolution, which led to sweeping changes that fundamentally altered the fabric of our nation.

  In Montreal’s St. Antoine District, for instance, women with deep connections to portering were vital to the functioning of the Colored Women’s Club, the Union United Congregational Church, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and the Negro Community Centre. Dr. Dorothy Williams, author of the seminal texts Blacks in Montreal: 1628-1986 and The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, explains the impetus behind this work:

  Dorothy Williams (DW): The sleeping car porters on these long routes would sometimes be away for 15, 20 days at a time, in a given month. What did their wives do and their children do in St. Antoine while they were away?

  And so a lot of the community needs that came out of “We have to do something!” “We’re not allowed in these organizations that are here.” “St. Jean Baptiste or St. Vincent de Paul, they’re not gonna serve us.” “St. Patrick Society, they’re not gonna …” “What are we going to do to take care of our needs with our children, with our men away?”

  Now to think back to that time is how they would have perceived being alone as Black women in this community … And so community development really came out of the needs of these mothers, and of these women who were like: “We have to do something for our children. We have to come together and create community.” And then also sometimes it’s just a natural way. You’re sort of meeting your friends over time and it’s like, you want to formalize that, because you may attract other people to come and be part of your organization. So yes, it was the Black women that basically created the Black institutions in Montreal, at least the ones that we consider to be foundational to Black community development. And these were the wives and girlfriends of the Black porters, the sleeping car porters in particular.

  RP: Judith Williams-Graham, who is descended from a long line of sleeping car porters, explains how other community spaces, such as a popular, local restaurant in Calgary, also served as important gathering places for women:

  Judith Williams-Graham (JWG): If I could start with Luella Bellamy, who had Lou’s Chicken Fry across from the CPR station on 9^th Avenue in Calgary. The restaurant provided a place of employment for many of the Black women … Luella Bellamy’s restaurant was a central hub.

  RP: While woman found friendship and strength in various community settings, they also recognized the great potential each held for making change. Dr. Saje Mathieu, Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955, describes how activism took root in community organizations, and particularly Black churches:

  Saje Mathieu (SM): We know that much of the unionization work and planning and sort of partnership building happened within the context of churches, right? These were people who were already worshiping together in addition to working together.

  And there, Black women, I mean, by there, I mean, in the church, Black women were very active, very political. And so it should come as no surprise that they extended that political vision to include a really simple and simply understandable goal, which is to have a reliable, consistent income for their families and to have their husbands and sons and brothers and cousins be able to go to work and come back safely …

  RP: For women, the personal was always political. Listen as Dr. Mathieu continues, drawing a straight line between their desire to protect their families and the fight to improve porters’ wages and working conditions:

  SM: These were the women, who year after year, month after month, generation after generation, witnessed their loved ones come back from work feeling belittled, dehumanized, frustrated, harmed, accosted, sometimes racially accosted, sick from having to work in smoky, sooty spaces, suffering from constant sleep deprivation. It is those women who had had to spackle those men back together, right, stitched them back together, ironed those uniforms, reminded the men that they were respected at home and in their communities, if not always in their workplace. So those women understood the calls that union men were making for improved conditions in the workplace. How having, you know, the ability to have compensation when you’re injured, recognizing that they too experience holidays and want to spend them with their families and should not, you know, have to make the decision between penury and holidays and family …

  I occasionally find letters being written by the spouses … I see accounts from the children of porters about what it was like when, how their mothers or their aunts or their grandmothers tried to communicate their support, whether it was things like ensuring that the house was always quiet on the few days when the porter was home, right? That he get all the attention when he’s home. And imagine how important that would have felt when your job is to constantly have everybody else that you serve feel like they’re the center of the universe, right? And so to come back into that nuclear family or the broader Black community and again be held up, right, is something that is absolutely vital to these women.

  RP: Just as women thought long and hard about the best ways to support their loved ones when they were at home, their approach to activism was also personal and varied across the community. While some advocated for modest change to the status quo, fearing serious consequences should unionization not succeed, others went all in, joining organizations that publicly advocated for the rights of porters.

  This was certainly the case with the women who joined the US-based International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Ladies’ Auxiliary. Composed of CPR porters’ wives, girlfriends, mothers, and sisters, this branch of the union collected dues in the men’s absence, helped out in local headquarters, and spearheaded important fundraising ventures to support both the organization and the community.

  It is important to point out that women whose loved ones worked for the CNR did not have a similar kind of organization to which they could belong. While Grizzle’s collection is silent when it comes to these women, it is safe to assume that they too surely played supportive roles in lobbying against the company’s exploitative work culture.

  Dr. Mathieu explains how Ladies’ Auxiliaries across Canada synced perfectly with efforts to unionize CPR porters. In particular, she draws attention to the empowerment that resulted from aligning with this transnational union movement:

  SM: The Women’s Auxiliary is invented almost at the very same time as these union chapters, within days or months. So to my mind, as a historian, there’s no lag, right, between their understanding the import and value of unionization and supporting that as part of this Auxiliary. Secondly, they are growing the Auxiliary onto or grafting it onto other pre-existing women-led social, political, medical, cultural organizations. So there’s already an institutional scaffolding, right, that these women then use to publicize their needs, their community’s needs, their husband’s needs, their other loved ones. And then third, those women also define for themselves what all of that work is going to mean, right. So they, for example, are the ones who steer some of the union effort, union audiences, union money towards supporting educational programs, like scholarships for the children of porters to go to university in the United States or to have internships in the United States, pursue their passions in Europe and elsewhere, right?

  So we see the women make present the connection between the rail and the Black family in so many different spaces. And that, because of the small size of the Black community in many cities, other than Montreal and Toronto, these women are doing sort of triple, quadruple duty with their one organizational footprint, right? So, to my mind, these women are absolutely vital. They are the anchor for their communities. They are the heart for their community. They are oftentimes not the hope, but they’re, this is going to sound cheesy, but like the wind beneath the sail, right, of these Black men who, especially in the early years of unionization, are dejected.

  Now, when the BSCP comes later, by the 1940s, now we’re talking about a much larger, much more organized international structure for these Women’s Auxiliaries. And what I find is that, again, the Canadian women are instantly attracted to that, right. They welcome and see the value in that international sort of realm of political work, especially as women. And I see very quickly how these women are climbing the ranks of the BSCP.

  RP: Velma Iris Coward King joined the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Ladies’ Auxiliary in Montreal because her brother, Victor, was not just a porter but an important early organizer of the union movement there. She served as its first Secretary and then, later, became its President. Like others, she knew that making a commitment to the Ladies’ Auxiliary would ultimately reap rewards for her family and others in the community.

  Velma Iris Coward King (VK): Well, I think that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Port-Porters was, um, the greatest thing at the time for the Black population of Canada because the salaries were atrocious before the Brotherhood came in. Um, they earned under $100 a month then the salary soared, cause I know my father’s salary was under $100 a month and the salary soared. So they had better, uh, better living, uh, capacity, you know. Their families were able to, uh, have a better education all around the whole con— economic things. It made the, um, it were as if you were a young child and you suddenly put on your long pants you became men, uh, that made people respect you more. Even the railroad companies respected you because before they, uh, you know, they-they didn’t dare call you anymore just Joe … Once you had a union to represent you and to speak for you, they knew that they couldn’t treat you as dirt … They then had someone to speak for you … Before that, they could do anything they want, they could fire you on the spot. There was no representation. And now you, uh, you-you definitely could not be taken advantage— unfair advantage of you.

  RP: Evelyn Marshall Braxton, who like Mrs. King was also based in Montreal and served as the Ladies’ Auxiliary President for a time, was much more direct when Grizzle asked her why she joined the organization:

  Evelyn Marshall Braxton (EB): Of course, we heard about the-the latest, uh, we heard about the Brotherhood and we know that, uh, in order for the homes and the families to be protected we needed a strong union home … Because at the time, men were working for very, very low wages and, uh, the porters, uh, did not get the respect on the train that, uh, they were- they were not treated as if they were men with great intelligence. There was many, as I say the CPR had a lot of undergraduates. They had the men who was able, had they the financial back who would have been able to go on to loftier heights … But to the economic condition, we knew of the crash and the unemployment in those days, and they were forced to turn to the railroad to secure a better way of life for their family and, uh, in doing so, they were forced to work for long hours, low salaries, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porter was like a saviour for the Black man.

  RP: Helen Williams-Bailey, who served as the first president for the Ladies’ Auxiliary in Winnipeg, offered Grizzle a cheekier reason behind her involvement in the organization:

  Helen Williams-Bailey (HWB): Well, I think with anything, um, the women should support the men in their lives. And um, I guess you’ve heard that old phrase behind every good man, there’s a great woman. [laughs]

  RP: All kidding aside, women took the commitment they made to the Ladies’ Auxiliary seriously. Listen as Dr. Melinda Chateauvert, author of the classic text Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, explains what a typical meeting looked like and how these gatherings also implicitly served as training grounds for women’s activism. In particular, the use of Robert’s Rules of Order, the standard manual guiding voluntary associations in their operations of governance, gave women the language they needed to participate in civic activities within and beyond their communities.

  Melinda Chateauvert (MC): Each had the same kind of structure which was similar to and actually kind of almost the same as the White Railway Brotherhoods. Now, one of the things that we could think about because they were Brotherhoods, that represents as we can obviously guess, a fraternal kind of organization. And the fraternity and sorority, if you will, that that meant was that there were all sorts of kinds of a ritual in which each meeting and membership took place.

  Meetings often began with the Brotherhood song, the “Marching Together” song that Rosina Tucker wrote … They used this song to all sing together into … bring them into some kind of community … So they would sing the song, they would have everybody, when you were initiated became a member. You were also supposed to tell the story of the Brotherhood, how it had fought. That becomes kind of another way of instilling the history and the struggle and letting people learn what it was and what it meant to be a porter, and to be a member of the Brotherhood and the kind of work that Randolph and other women did … And so that is one of the reasons that they continually tried to instill the sense of importance and meaning into membership is through these rituals that they had at every meeting.

  You know, they followed Robert’s Rules of Order, as I think it’s also interesting about that is like other organizations that use Robert’s Rules, since those are what are used in most civic and political organizations, it made them aware of how to be part of other organizations, how to take part in another political group because they knew what Robert’s Rules were and they knew how to, how to manipulate them to get their say in and to get their motions passed. So that was also part of it too.

  … If you will, you know, in a classroom where you start with a pledge, the song, the history, all of those things which bring people together and make them understand or have a common meaning to what they’re doing, did help to instill and keep the Auxiliary and the Brotherhood going over the years … It’s an interesting part to think about how these weren’t just, let’s get together and have coffee. No, there were actually structure and meaning and agendas for each of these meetings. And sometimes they met twice a month. Sometimes they met only once a month, it depended on the place. Sometimes it was difficult to meet because of all sorts of different issues. But I think this was a way then of also ensuring, like other women’s groups of the era and earlier did, to get women involved in civic activities or to train them to be able to participate in other civic organizations.

  RP: The women themselves did not necessarily view their membership to the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Ladies’ Auxiliary as a training ground for civic activism. Listen as Grizzle asks Cordie Williams and Mrs. Williams-Bailey about the purpose of their work:

  SG: Were you ever a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters?

  Cordie Williams (CW): Yes, I was … We had a chapter there. Mm.

  SG: Mm-hmm. Why did you join that?

  CW: Oh, after Brother Randolph’s visit to organize the porters, we had- he gave us much inspiration to do all that we could to … support it.

  SG: All right. And did you have a joining fee or dues to pay?

  CW: Yes, but I can’t remember what they were at this time. They were very minimal during those years.

  SG: Mm-hmm. How many members did the Calgary Division have in the Ladies’ Auxiliary?

  CW: No, I would say about twelve active ones.

  SG: Mm-hmm. Did you have an office? Did you hold a posi- an official position?

  CW: Yeah, I was on the Entertainment Committee.

  SG: I see. Uh-huh. What did you do, uh, what’s the purpose of the Entertainment Committee, or the organization? To raise funds or what?

  CW: Yes. Right. Just in support of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and when they would have functions, well, we would, you know, assist in the operation of their social functions.

  SG: … Well, you say you were the first president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary here in Winnipeg?

  HWB: That’s right…

  SG: Um, what kind of work did the-the Auxiliary do, tell me that?

  HWB: Hmm. Well, for fundraising, I know we— we held, um, we held a spring tea. Um, we met and, um, we had regular meetings and, uh, it was mostly just to support the cause of, uh, the Brotherhood.

  RP: For their part, porters tended to offer an overly simplified view of the role played by the Ladies’ Auxiliary within both the union movement and Black communities. These explanations, as Odell Holmes and Frank Collins demonstrate, were heavily tied to commonplace perceptions around traditional gender roles:

  Odell Holmes (OH): … [T]he ladies themselves, they, uh, whenever we had functions, the ladies would play an important role in, uh, food and things like that. Supplying of food, helpin’ us prepare the foods, and what not and, uh, entertainments. And, uh, oh, I haven’t given it too much thought lately, but I’d say they played a very important role.

  SG: That brings me to the question of, uh, what kind of, uh, functions did the- did the union and the Auxiliary put on to raise funds?

  OH: In, uh, Calgary, we had banquets, but we mostly gave dances …

  SG: But the funds did you raise, what were they used for?

  OH: Well, we, um, used the funds, I would say to, uh, carry on our local expenses because, uh, our dues were quite low and there wasn’t too much coming out of dues in order to support our local … As well as when, uh, convention roll around, we needed money to send a delegate to various conventions every two years, I think it was, we were having conventions then. And, um, that was the main purpose of, uh, having a little money on hand.

  SG: What was the role of the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters?

  Frank Collins (FC): Oh, well the role, it was more or less a morale builder. The thing we had to organize the women in order to get the support for the men because after all, uh, with the men working, bringing in the money if there was any disruption in that money coming in, the women had to understand what the system was. So, it was— it’s morale, I think, primarily. Now, they gave functions and there were social functions.

  SG: Mm-hmm. [silence] I guess the spirit of-of- of, uh, having the women in the organization through the auxiliary was, uh, that, uh, the philosophy was that, uh— to have a strong Brotherhood at home meant a stronger union.

  FC: Oh, definitely. Yeah, and-and you had to have the women behind you before you had a strong union because if you didn’t have them working with you, you were nowhere.

  RP: Mr. Holmes and Mr. Collins knew that women’s roles within the Ladies’ Auxiliary mattered. However, their comments relegated them to the labour women did behind-the-scenes in kitchens and across tables, as they organized and ran various fundraising events to support attendance at conferences held by the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters. Fortunately, we gain deeper insights into the value of the Ladies’ Auxiliary when Grizzle permitted women to speak freely. As trust was established, they spoke frankly about the deeper purpose of their engagement and the legacy they hoped to leave behind. When Grizzle gave Mrs. King an opening to describe the often-invisible roles women played in the fight for porters’ rights, this is what she said:

  VK: … We had scholarships, um … the first scholarship was given in 1944 …

  SG: Can you enlighten me as to what was the philosophy of the Brotherhood having a Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood?

  VK: It was felt that, uh, many of— I believe that many of the men at the beginning had to be coerced into joining the Brotherhood and to continue to pay their dues and to have an interest. And also, um, I to have the ladies have some sympathy with the men, uh, and in what they were doing, and also to realize how much better off they would be, uh they would be with the men earning so much more money because very often people fell behind, the men fell behind. They didn’t get to the meeting. It was the woman who was the back, uh, backbone in the house of the family. And, um, got the men out to the meetings and kept their interests up …

  And also the fact that, uh, the woman, for the most part didn’t know what labor unions was. It was an education for-for them, and the men themselves when they joined all they knew, uh, about it was the fact that it was giving them an additional amount of money, which they didn’t have considering, uh, that, and when they would come home, um, they’re very tired. And they, you know, they— the, uh, when they had a wife who would, um, be able to tell them how far they had gone and how much they had gained by being in the Brotherhood and-and, uh, sympathized with them and know about— something about labour economics, because by means of, uh, going to many of the meetings, they had speakers that came in and talked to them about economics and how to use the— uh, and how to better spend that additional dollar that they had to make it go further. So, um, because of that dollar that they received, uh, the mothers was able to work I believe better … through the Auxiliary to help their kids continue their, uh, you know, go in for their education … We have many of the, uh, uh, many of the children who went on and, um, uh, got degrees and, uh, you know, they were encouraged because the-the mother’s vision where the mother might not have had a vision before, if it wasn’t for the Auxiliary pressing, helping to press them … to do things and, uh, encouraging the family.

  RP: For Mrs. King, membership to the Ladies’ Auxiliary began with the fight for porters’ rights and quickly extended to all aspects of her experiences as well as those of her children. Economic stability would lead to not only upward mobility and an educated second generation, but also gender and racial equality.

  When reading from some of her historical records, Mrs. Braxton explicitly added activism and racial uplift to the list of reasons why this organization mattered to her and other women:

  EB: … The Ladies’ Auxiliary aim is to fight for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porter, and to fight for the struggle of women for independence, expression, and co-operation with men, for freedom, equality, and justice. Today, the Ladies’ Auxiliary join with people of colour who are fighting for independence and their rightful place among the nations of the world …

  SG: Mrs. Braxton is gonna continue now with discussing the program of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.

  EB: Yes. One of the- many of the programs that we had was an uplift for the Blacks in the community. It was one of culture. And, uh, one of our program that brought out many of the mothers, we honoured every Mother’s Day. We carried on our Mother’s Day Tea for a great many years. And we passed it on to the hostesses of Union Church, when we no longer had the amount of members to continue in the way that we would like to have the Mother’s Day go on …

  RP: Dr. Mathieu tells us what racial uplift meant to Mrs. Braxton and her contemporaries:

  SM: … When we remember that sleeping car porters were, you know, the sort of middle class, the upper middle class of Black society in Canada, then it should come as no surprise that these communities were also often wedded to the appeal of racial uplift. Now, racial uplift meant things like, you know, doing things to elevate the race, celebrating literature, celebrating music, celebrating art, definitely celebrating education, celebrating entrepreneurship, all of those things, advocating for improvement in laws, greater equity, but also a really smart and purposeful use of the vote as well…

  Racial uplift also wanted to see an effective use of the Black press for circulating these ideas. It is Black women in Canada who are writing into the Black press and recording, not just: “We are here.” “We’re here in Winnipeg.” “We’re here in Edmonton.” “We’re here in Saskatoon.” But they’re saying: “We’re here and our community lives are robust.” So they almost seemingly had a fundraiser every week, which tells me as a historian that there’s money floating around those communities regardless of how people from the outside looking in assume those communities to be poor, right?

  Even with limited funds, these are women who effectively shake down others for ten cents here, twenty cents there. For the time that we’re talking about, right, the early, the interwar years, it was about fifteen cents to get lunch at a diner. When you’re getting people to give over fifteen cents that they could have given to the church, that they could have used for their own pleasure, it speaks to the importance that they place on that donation. And seldom do I see in Black newspapers calls for support of someone who needs a scholarship to go to a historically Black college and university in the US, or to do private lessons with a maestro in Europe. I’ve never seen them call for a fundraiser and not meet their goals. Because you see that within a few weeks, sometimes months, they celebrate the departure of the person for whom they were trying to raise money. If they have con - and they try everything from picnics to concerts to bake sales. Again, all of the things that we take for granted that other communities do to support each other, right …

  What I’m finding is that that community is very, very centered on children and somewhat surprising, equally dedicated to girls and boys. So in fact, just off the top of my head right now, I can think of far more accounts of young black teenagers and sort of, you know, early twenties type people heading off to university in the United States. So those are ways in which I’m seeing that racial uplift, right? This sort of emphasis on education, celebrating the community, celebrating that the community is doing good things, things that enrich everyone. And it is women who are pushing, who are making those kinds of ambitions possible …

  RP: Racial uplift, as Dr. Mathieu makes clear, was also tied to what she refers to as the “politics of respectability”:

  SM: … Those women also had another big job on their hands, which was to raise daughters who would be perfect porters’ wives, right? The sort of politics of respectability. Right? All this social grooming that I talked about, all this racial uplift, also had the purpose of maintaining this kind of group of respectable wives. Right? So it’s about teaching your child early on how to shine your husband’s shoes, how to iron his shirt, how to set his buttons just right. And, daughters, like I’ve, again, I’ve read interviews, I’ve done interviews where they talk about that, you know, where they talk about how they understood manhood through the lens of their fathers, and more importantly, their mothers sort of doting over their sleeping car spouses. And these annual picnics that were held all over the country, these porters’ balls, where people came from great distances. I mean, people came from Minneapolis, from Iowa, to go to Winnipeg for a dance. That speaks to how connected these Black communities were transnationally, but also how they craved access to other folks who were also Black, who were also American, and were willing to travel for it. Well, these were the sort of annual coming out debutante ball equivalents for porters’ children, and maybe sometimes even girls who weren’t yet in the porter family, but it was the entry point, right? And it was therefore those Auxiliary women’s job to do all of that class-laden, you know, careful massaging and grooming of their daughters, nieces, cousins, whatever, to turn them into women who were then married to men with reliable income sources. That also maintained community for good or for bad.

  RP: Dr. Chateauvert adds to this discussion, noting the power that was implicit, in a larger context, in women’s participation in the Ladies’ Auxiliary:

  MC: I think the struggle that Randolph and the, and other members of the Brotherhood, male and female, understood, whether consciously or unconsciously, but certainly had to, they were certainly aware of it. And that is the way that gender roles in the African-American community have always been politicized in the sense that acting out of one’s gender, acting too womanish, acting too manly, resulted in violence, plain and simple … And so that they had to negotiate a way of representing themselves, at least to the public, that they were adhering to white ideas about gender. So this is what I call the politics of respectability, which is different than what we currently call respectability politics, because what I see happening, within the Brotherhood, within the Auxiliaries, within the Councils, is a way of self-representation that allowed their activities to be viewed as positive, even though they were radical, and yet did not necessarily, or did not invite the kind of violence, oppression, and suppression of their work that more outré forms of activity might have brought onto them …

  RP: Dr. Chateauvert continues, noting the deeper implications inherent in the politics of respectability:

  MC: … Because for Black women in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s to be represented or to present themselves as ladies was in fact a radical subversion of popular culture. And that ladyhood is what the Auxiliaries, and particularly the Ladies’ Auxiliary, represented. To say we are not mammies, we are not sapphires, we are not these representations that popular culture keeps putting out of us. We are housewives and we have an interest, and this is what we want to do, and this is what we think, and this is what we are working for. So the politics of that, which is what I call the politics of respectability … which were ways of showing that they were like other people.

  RP: Without women’s support, it is highly unlikely that the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters would have been successful in organizing CPR porters and securing a collective agreement that drastically improved men’s working conditions and, by extension, the quality of both their lives and those of their loved ones.

  Letting women, like Mrs. King, openly share their reflections about this time in their lives, and really listening to what they implied in their statements, takes us to the main reason they supported the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters through their participation in the Ladies’ Auxiliary:

  VK: … because of that dollar that they received, uh, the mothers was able to work I believe better … through the Auxiliary to help their kids continue their, uh, you know, go in for their education … We have many of the, uh, uh, many of the children who went on and, um, uh, got degrees and, uh, you know, they were encouraged because the-the mother’s vision where the mother might not have had a vision before, if it wasn’t for the Auxiliary pressing, helping to press them … to do things and, uh, encouraging the family.

  SG: Do you feel the Ladies’ Auxiliary provided a support to the—

  Mrs. King: A stimulus- a stimulus within the family and a cementing of the family constellation.

  RP: Coming up in the sixth episode of “Porter Talk,” we’ll explore how union gains created the necessary conditions required for racial uplift and upward mobility within Black communities. As porters and their loved ones imagined a new future for themselves and future generations, they also took concrete steps to remake modern Canada for all citizens.

  SG: … Can you make any concluding comments or observations or both on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters? Its effect on the you— Community, uh, or any other concluding comment? The good that they, it did in the community.

  Harold James Fowler (HF): Oh, I think it-I think it had a great deal on— Because it raised, lifted the standards of the porters, and as quiet as it’s kept, porters did a lot for this-this country.

  Thank you for being with us. I’m Richard Provencher, your host. You’ve been listening to “Porter Talk,” the first season of Voices Revealed.

  Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Melinda Chateauvert, Judy Williams-Graham, Dr. Saje Mathieu, and Dr. Dorothy Williams. You can find biographies of each person who participated in this episode in the show notes. There you will also find an episode transcript with embedded timestamps that link you to the original interview content in the Grizzle collection. Feel free to explore and share these stories widely!

  We also acknowledge those who have done French voiceovers for this episode: Roldson Dieudonné, Gbidi Coco Alfred, Lerntz Joseph, Euphrasie Mujawamungu, Frédéric Pierre, and Christelle Tchako Womassom.

  If you’re interested in listening to the French equivalent of our podcast episodes, you can find them on our website or your favourite podcast app. Simply search for “Découvrez Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.”

  Acclaimed musician and producer, Paul Novotny, composed “Jazz Dance,” the theme song for “Porter Talk.” Joe Sealy, famed jazz pianist who is the son of a porter, is also featured on the recording.

  All other music in this episode is from the audio library at BlueDotSessions.com.

  This episode was produced, written, engineered, and edited by Tom Thompson, Jennifer Woodley, and Stacey Zembrzycki.

  For more information on our podcasts, go to Library and Archives Canada’s homepage, type “podcast” in the search bar in the top right corner, and click on the first link. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, reach out to the podcast team at the email address located at the bottom of the episode page.

Host: Richard Provencher, Chief, Media Relations, Communications and Policy Branch

Featuring the voices of: Helen Williams-Bailey, Evelyn Marshall Braxton, Frank Collins, Harold James Fowler, Odell Holmes, Velma Iris Coward King, and Cordie Williams

Guests: Dr. Melinda Chateauvert, Dr. Saje Mathieu, Dr. Dorothy Williams, and Judith Williams-Graham

Voiceover for the French version of this podcast: Roldson Dieudonné, Gbidi Coco Alfred, Lerntz Joseph, Euphrasie Mujawamungu, Frédéric Pierre, and Christelle Tchako Wommasom

Narrator biographies

Interviewers

Stanley G. Grizzle, the eldest of seven children, was born in Toronto in 1918. His parents, both of whom immigrated from Jamaica in 1911, worked in the service sector: his mother as a domestic servant and his father as a chef for the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). Poverty and a lack of opportunities led Grizzle to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1940, where he began a 20-year career as a sleeping car porter. In 1942, he was conscripted by the Canadian Government, attaining corporal status while he served as a medic in Holland. In 1962, Grizzle left the CPR and became the first Black Canadian to be employed by the Ontario Ministry of Labour. He ran unsuccessfully for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation before being appointed by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau as a judge in the court of Canadian citizenship in 1978. A devoted activist, Grizzle campaigned tirelessly for reforms in Canadian labour, immigration, and human rights policies. He was also an avid historian dedicated to documenting and preserving Black History in Canada. His collection is held at Library and Archives Canada.

Narrators

Helen Williams-Bailey was born on a farm about fifty kilometres outside North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1919. Her brothers, two of whom later became porters, included Tom, Roy, Lee, and Carl Williams. She moved to Winnipeg in 1942 and quickly became involved in the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to support the work that her brothers Tom and Roy did on the rails. She served as the Auxiliary’s first president prior to marrying her husband, a Canadian National Railway (CNR) porter, in 1944. (Source: 417401 [part 1]; 417400 [part 2])

Evelyn Marshall Braxton was born in Saint Kitts in 1913. She immigrated to Canada in 1929, joining her mother in Montréal, where she attended school. Her stepfather, John Mardenborough, worked out of the CPR’s Ottawa Division as a sleeping car porter. She married her first husband, Norman Marshall, in 1937. Born in Toronto, he worked for the Pullman Company as a sleeping car porter until his untimely death in 1958. She later married George Braxton, a CPR porter who was an active member of the BSCP. Braxton became involved in the Brotherhood’s Ladies’ Auxiliary in Montréal in 1946, serving as its president for over sixteen years. (Source: 417386)

Frank Collins was born in Vancouver in 1915. He became a CPR sleeping car porter in 1933, working out of the division located in Vancouver until he resigned in 1956. Along with Ernie Lawrence, he worked hard to organize the Vancouver Division’s BSCP, beginning in 1939 through to its certification in 1944 and the signing of its first contract in 1945. He and Lawrence managed to recruit 96% of the city’s CPR porters into the union, despite the risks associated with joining. (Source: 417402)

Harold James Fowler was born in Dover Township in Kent County, about 10 kilometres from the city of Chatham. He made his first trip as a CPR sleeping car porter in June 1939, running out of the company’s Toronto Division to Vancouver. Fowler was a chartered member of the BSCP, serving as chairman of its Entertainment Committee for a period. He also took great pride in providing sound advice and counselling to fellow porters while they were in transit. Fowler was forced to retire from his job in 1976 due to severe arthritis in his back. Luckily, he had worked enough years to qualify for a full pension. (Source: 417393)

Odell Holmes was born in Clearview, Oklahoma, in 1915. When Holmes was two years old, his family immigrated to Canada, settling in Maidstone, Saskatchewan, where most of his mother’s family already resided; they came to the country as part of the Great Migration of 1910. His father remained in the U.S., formally separating from his mother. After Holmes’s mother remarried, the family moved to Lloydminster, where he worked several low-paying, menial jobs before gaining employment as a sleeping car porter with the CPR’s Calgary Division in 1940 and then its Vancouver Division in 1961. During Holmes’s thirty-eight-year career, he was heavily involved in the union movement, serving as President of both the Calgary (fourteen years) and Vancouver (thirteen years) Divisions of the BSCP. (Source: 417389)

Velma Iris Coward King was born in Montréal in 1914. Her father, a CPR sleeping car porter for nearly thirty years, descended from Barbados, and her mother migrated from St. Croix. King’s brother Victor, who was also a CPR porter, was instrumental in initiating talks with the BSCP, liaising with its leading officials and ensuring that those employed by the CPR’s Montréal Division joined the union. King was brought into the movement early on, in 1943, to support these efforts. She served as Secretary of the BSCP’s Ladies Auxiliary in Montréal and then as its President for fifteen years. She was also a member of the Executive Board of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. King went on to obtain a Bachelor of Education and taught on the railway as well as for the Protestant English School Board in Montréal for twenty-eight years. (Source: 417386 [part 1]; 417383 [part 2])

Cordie Williams was born in Athabasca, Alberta, in 1921. Her father hailed from Texas and her mother from Oklahoma. Both migrated to Canada in 1914 as part of the Great Migration, fleeing racial violence in the US and searching for land to secure a brighter future for their children. Williams remained on the family homestead until she was eighteen years old. She then moved to Calgary, where she gained employment as a domestic servant for the next eight years. She married Roy Williams, a CPR sleeping car porter who was also active in the drive to unionize workers, in 1940. Shortly thereafter, she became a member of the BSCP’s Ladies Auxiliary in Calgary, serving as its Secretary-Treasurer for a period of time. (Source: 417389)

Scholars, Storytellers and Community Knowledge Keepers

Dr. Melinda Chateauvert holds a PhD in American History from the University of Pennsylvania. Her 1998 book, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, documents the actions African American women in the United States and Canada undertook in organizing local chapters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first international Black trade union in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. It continues to be a seminal text in labour history. Prior to her retirement, Dr. Chateauvert served as Associate Director at the Front Porch Research Strategy.

Dr. Steven High is a Full Professor of History at Concordia University; he also founded the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling there. He holds a PhD in Canadian History from the University of Ottawa. Dr. High’s most recent award-winning book, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class, tells the story of two neighbourhoods, one predominantly white and the other black, situated in Montreal’s southwest district.

Dr. Saje Mathieu is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She holds a joint PhD in History and African American Studies from Yale University and has been a fellow at the Warren Center and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, the Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her first book, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955, details the history of African American and West Indian sleeping car porters in Canada and the social, cultural, legal and political impacts of their employment. Dr. Mathieu’s current work is focused on the global experiences of Black soldiers during World War I.

Dr. Dorothy Williams holds a PhD in Library and Information Sciences from McGill University and currently works as a researcher at Concordia University within its Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network. She was bestowed a CBC Black Changemaker Award in 2022 and a Library and Archives Canada Scholar Award in 2023. In spring 2024, she was accorded the Ordre de Montréal, the city’s highest honour for outstanding contributions made to the city’s development and renown, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Dr. Williams’ books, Blacks in Montreal: 1628–1986 and The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, are classics in the fields of Black studies and Black history in Canada. Dr. Williams is also a pedagogical pioneer who has long contributed to the development of curriculum pertaining to Black history in Canada, as well as a community knowledge keeper. The archival collection she cares for in her home is one of the most extensive existing archives to document Black experience in Montreal.

Judith Williams-Graham is descended from the Williams and Carruthers families. The Williams family originated in Texas before moving to Oklahoma to pick cotton, while the Carruthers had deep roots in Oklahoma. Both families fled racial violence in the United States between 1910 and 1914, taking part in the Great Migration that brought African American migrants to Canada. The Williams family settled in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, before moving to a homestead in Hillside. The Carruthers moved to Amber Valley, Alberta, where they established a homestead. Williams-Graham’s father, Roy, began to work for the CPR as a sleeping car porter in Winnipeg in 1936. He was later transferred to Calgary, where he met Williams-Graham’s mother, Cordie. They married in 1940. Both were involved in the fight to unionize CPR porters, a battle to which Williams-Graham was exposed at an early age. Many extended members of Williams-Graham’s family were also implicated in railway work. She has been a lifelong activist and organizer within western Canada’s Black community and remains steadfast in her desire to share this history with others. She is currently writing a memoir that documents her family’s story and Black experience more generally.

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