PORTERS.
The porters on the passenger trains are chiefly colored men. Their politeness to passengers and distinct voices in calling stations, render their appropriateness for the position. They assist in handling baggage, but they are very rarely allowed to assist colored ladies on and off the train. They must get off possibly with babies in their arms and valises. The porter is allowed to help white ladies off by taking the packages and valises to the platform of the depot, the brakeman and conductor being too aristocratic to do such, like most southerners are.
BAGGAGEMEN.
There are white and colored employees in large baggage rooms. The bulk of the white baggagemen abhor the idea of carrying a colored person’s baggage to the baggage car, although it is checked. They sometimes order our intelligent colored gentleman to convey his own baggage to the train, especially if he looks like a “drummer” or travelling salesman.
A young man travelling for a colored Building and Loan firm was shot and killed at a little town south of Jackson, Miss., by a baggageman, who failed to compel him to carry his own baggage. The same style of marking on the door of railway cars for colored people is on the doors of waiting rooms. Colored department porters are employed to see that the black people go to their room, but is not allowed to resist white people putting packages and tying their dogs in the colored room. White convicts are held in the colored waiting rooms.
Coleman on the “G. P.”
Concluding my Southern tour in 1892, I left Birmingham, Ala., Nov. 1st, 1892, bound for Durant, Miss. A large number of passengers were on board when we arrived at Coalsburg, a little town situated in the coal regions of Alabama, about 15 miles from Birmingham. The depot agent having flagged the train, ran to the conductor exclaiming:
“You can’t go under two hours!”
“Why can’t I?” asked the conductor. “Why that east-bound local have jumped the track.”