Malcome X,Black History Month and Railroads

[Anonymous]

Last night on PBS "American Experance" they mentioned that Malcom X father was Mysterously ran over by streetcar in Lansing or East Deering despite the cars having cowcatchers. They also mentioned that Malcom X (Malcom Little) worked as a cook for the New Haven on there trains to Boston.
Now there must have been some intresting conversations on that train[8)].
It is also intresting to note that even today there are many sleeping car porters on Amtrak that are black but even today there "seems" that there are not that many black conducters in proportion to the population .

[MP57313]

could be; don't know the statistics. Regardless, Amtrak and the commuter lines do have a lot of black employees on staff. Certain trains also have a large percentage of black customers: check out the Carolinian someday...last time I rode they had Luther Vandross on CD in business class. Good train riding music...

[daveklepper]

Don't know where you live, but before I moved to Jerusalem I saw many black conductors in Amtrak service in the NE corridor. Much of the NYCTA staff, the subway system, is black, including very resonsible positions, and many of these people impressed me with their intelligence and dedication. Somewhat true of the LIRR and somewhat less so on Metro North, but they are there also. But the influx of women had just started. Just begining.

[Jetrock]

Black Americans are absolutely inseparable from railroad history--black Pullman porters, black redcaps, and black firemen (like Sim Webb, Casey Jones' fireman) were present.

Malcom X's time as a railroad cook was before his prison experience and conversion to Elijah Muhammad's version of Islam, so I imagine the conversation wouldn't have been that lively.

And, if one wants to go back even farther, keep in mind that the railroads in the American South were built by black slave labor. When folks talk about the Chinese who built the Central Pacific as "slave labor", I feel the inherent urge to correct them...

[Anonymous]

Malcome X father and mother were active in the Marcus Garvey movement so yes the conversation could have hit on that

[Anonymous]

The father of Malcolm X was killed while fighting against the restricted place that was assigned to his people in this country.He went to live with his sister in Boston and went to work at the kinds of jobs available to Negro youth-mainly the jobs not wanted by white people, like: shoeshine boy, soda jerk, hotel busboy, member of a dining car crew on trains traveling to New York, and a waiter in a Harlem nightclub.

[Jetrock]

"The Autobiography of Malcom X" is a pretty good read for insight on that sort of thing--admittedly, I went and checked my copy to find out exactly when he worked on the dining car.

And not to be too persnickety about it, but trolley cars don't have cowcatchers (pilots)--they have fenders, which are supposed to drop down and scoop up people or animals who fall on the rails inn front of them. I don't know too much about the specifics of the situation, but a lot of those kind of "accidents" are pretty suspicious...

[tatans]

Oscar Peterson is being honored by a postage stamp, although there is an unwritten law in Canada the Queen is the only living person who can appear on a postage stamp, this is quite an honor, it's a 50 cent commemorative issued on his 80th birthday, Oscars father was a porter on the C.P.R. it's the first stamp to honor a living individual.