A collection of materials pertaining to the Pullman Porters will feature in an African Americana sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on March 27.
It includes a wealth of objects ranging from playing cards to jackets and is described by the auction house as the most complete archive it has ever handled.
 The Pullman Porters led the formation of a black middle class in America |
The porters, the majority former slaves, were hired to work aboard the Pullman sleeping cars from the 1860s onwards and developed a reputation for elite service.
Together they founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, the world's first all black union and a milestone in the civil rights movement.
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