Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

C. L. Dellums and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters helped to precipitate a sea of change in labor and race relations in California and the nation. Fundamental issues of unfair employment practices, discrimination, and segregation were confronted in new ways with consequences for all Americans. For the first time in U.S. history, a black labor union played a central role in shaping labor and civil rights policy.

Based on interviews and archival research, this new book tells the story of Dellums and the impact nationally of his groundbreaking work.

The BSCP, the first national union of black workers, was founded in 1925. C. L. Dellums, who worked as a porter in Oakland, became the West Coast organizer and was elected vice president in 1929. He held that position until 1968, when he succeeded A. Philip Randolph as president. In 1937, the BSCP made history when it compelled one of the largest U.S. corporations —the Pullman Company— to recognize and negotiate a contract with a black workers’ union. This was unprecedented and almost inconceivable in the context of prior U.S. history.

In 1941, at the beginning of World War II, the leadership of the BSCP, with the support of civil rights leaders, pushed U.S. President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 requiring the ending of racial discrimination in defense industries. Tens of thousands of black men and women would be hired to work alongside whites in wartime plants across the nation.

C. L. Dellums was not only a labor leader. In 1948, he was chosen to be the first West Coast Regional Director of the NAACP. He also led the long struggle to get a fair employment practices law passed in California. The successful struggle contributed to the emergence of civil rights activism nationally and to equal treatment legislative initiatives in California and elsewhere.