Chicago Innovations That Changed the World-- Part 4: Pullman Sleeper Car

16. THE PULLMAN SLEEPER CAR (1864) George Pullman was one of Chicago's greatest industrialists, rememebered for his luxurious rail cars and opportunistic--often demeaning-- labor practices toward blacks. His sleepinfg cars brought luxury to the middle class and his black workers into the middle class and President Lincoln's body home to the Springfield cemetery. //// He showed that luxury was a service and that came from his black Pullman Porters Railroads outsourced their luxury appointments to Pullman. Former house slaves from the South swarmed north and this was their ticket to the middle class. //// Pasengers crossed the United States, paying many times the price of a train ticket. Along with them came the Pullman Porters who also brough with them copies of the pro-equality Chicago Defender and helped start the Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North. //// --Cooter