The Pullman Palace Car Company, founded by George Pullman

George Pullman

George Mortimer Pullman was an American inventor and industrialist. He is known as the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, and for violently suppressing striking workers in the company town he created, Pullman .-Background:Born in Brocton, New York, his family moved to Albion,...

, manufactured railroad car

Railroad car

A railroad car or railway vehicle , also known as a bogie in Indian English, is a vehicle on a rail transport system that is used for the carrying of cargo or passengers. Cars can be coupled together into a train and hauled by one or more locomotives...

s in the mid-to-late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Pullman developed the sleeping car

Sleeping car

The sleeping car or sleeper is a railway/railroad passenger car that can accommodate all its passengers in beds of one kind or another, primarily for the purpose of making nighttime travel more restful. The first such cars saw sporadic use on American railroads in the 1830s and could be configured...

 which carried his name into the 1980s. The labor union associated with the company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was, in 1925, the first labor organization led by blacks to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor . It merged in 1978 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks , now known as the Transportation Communications International Union.The...

, which was organized by Pullman porters

Pullman porters

Pullman porters were men hired by George Pullman to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars.-History:...

, was one of the most powerful African-American political entities of the 20th century.