Main Points
- Southern Black migrants of the 19th century headed to urban areas like New York and Chicago
- Joseph Harris, a veteran of the war, moved to Manhattan where some of his USCT regiment had lived.
- Joseph started a family and made a career of working as a porter for the Pullman Railroad Car Company which led to a middle-class life. Eventually he moved back to the District to help his mother.
- Lorenzo Harris, the youngest of the four Harris brothers, migrated to Buffalo, NY because he had been given a good job at the Episcopal cathedral there.
- Buffalo, with its very small Black population in 1893, was a very different place from the District.
- Lorenzo worked at the Buffalo church for 26 years but always retained his ties with his family in the District.
Joseph Harris and the Pullman Railroad Car Company
Many of the Black people who migrated after the war from rural areas of the South often had certain job skills that aided in their employment. They tended to be literate, which was the case for the two Harris brothers. Joseph had lived through the Civil War and undergone a serious illness, so he was probably undaunted by a new life in New York where the violent 1863 Draft Riots had led to the death of many Black residents and the destruction of homes.1
Joseph first found work as a waiter and once the economy recovered from the 1878 depression he was hired by the Pullman Railroad Car Company as a porter. The job of porter was demanding, however, requiring long hours and time away from home, and it was not well paid. Often the porters were subjected to demeaning treatment by passengers, and they were always strictly monitored by the company, but Joseph made the job his career.2
Joseph saw more of the country than most people, witnessing the expansion of American industry in various areas. He also saw the effects of the Supreme Court case that approved the “separate but equal” doctrine that permitted the segregation of rail passengers. He kept close ties to his family, and when his father and his brother died in the early 90s, he returned to live at Dry Meadows to help his mother. He did not work for a few years, but eventually returned to Pullman in 1902, working out of Washington. The company never did treat its porters well, and although it offered a pension to long-time employees, Joseph was denied one when he retired in 1921. His retirement came four years before the establishment of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.3
Lorenzo Harris in Buffalo, NY
Lorenzo was the youngest of the Harris brothers and was the only one to have obtained formal schooling because of the construction of a local school after the Civil War. The situation of his migration was different from that of his older brother Joseph. His job as a building manager in a local District church led to a job at an Episcopal cathedral in Buffalo, NY which paid well. He and his wife arrived in the city in 1893 at the time of the economic crisis which was followed by a five-year depression They found a city that was very different from the District: Black residents were a small minority, and the cold climate was nothing like that of Washington. Nonetheless, they settled in and found a community both at the cathedral and the German American neighborhood where they bought a home.4
Lorenzo and his wife spent the rest of their lives in Buffalo, but they kept their ties to his family in the District. He remained an officer in a local District Black charitable organization and he regularly visited his mother. After 26 years he retired from the cathedral and received a pension. He and his wife then led an active social life that often was covered in the local Black newspaper. Lorenzo and his wife had no children, and he left his house in Buffalo to his sister’s daughter who went to live there.5
The 19th century migration of people like Joseph and Lorenzo were early signs of a larger migration of Black Southerners in the 20th century. The Depression cut the move of many people going North by half, but by the end of World War II, migration would grow to change cities in the North substantially.
Did you know…?
- The Pullman Company hired more Black men than any other company of the time.
- The working conditions of a Pullman porter were difficult and railroad porters did not form a union until 1925.
- The Pullman porter job was highly respected in the Black community, even though it was demanding and underpaid.
Questions for Students
- What were the advantages and disadvantages of the job of railroad car porter?
- How did literacy affect the lives of the Joseph and Lorenzo Harris?
- How do we know that the Harris family kept ties with each other and what explains their closeness?
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Endnotes
- Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, pp. 123-125
- Torrey and Green, 126-127
- Torrey and Green, 127-131
- Torrey and Green, 131-132
- Torrey and Green, 133-135
Other Sources
- Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America. Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 2005
- Harris, William H. The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
- Tye, Larry. Rising From the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. New York: Owl Books, Henry Holt, 2004