My name is Frank Davis, the year is 1926, and I'm a Pullman porter.
In 1865 a white man named George Pullman created a company that makes luxury sleeping cars for trains.
Like a first-class hotel on wheels, each Pullman car has marble sinks, fine carpeting, and crystal lights.
Many railroad companies include these luxury cars in their trains because people love to be pampered.
In fact, Pullman porters are called ambassadors of hospitality because we always try to please the passengers in any way we can.
Being a porter is one of the few good jobs a black man can get.
Usually the Pullman Company hires black men aged 25 to 40 years old who have a high-school education, but some of the porters are college graduates.
In fact, a few porters I work with have graduated from law and medical school.
My uncle, who got me my job, said that 30 percent of all black doctors were once porters.
You see, it's against the law in a lot of places for whites and blacks to work or socialize together.
Because of this segregation, hospitals won't hire black doctors,
so they work as porters to save enough money to open their own medical offices in black neighborhoods.
If a young man wants to be a Pullman porter,
he has to be recommended by a respected member of the black community, such as a preacher or a businessman.
The Pullman Company really likes to hire people who have relatives that have been porters,
because then the company knows the new porter already understands that the company is very strict, almost like the military.
That's why Pullman porter jobs tend to run in families, from generation to generation.
My uncle has been a porter for forty years, and my father was one too before he died a few years ago.
New porters are given a rule book that must be followed faithfully; this book contains instructions for everything a porter does.
In fact, every new porter has to pass a written test that proves he knows the rules.
For instance, there is only one way to make a bed—the Pullman way.
The sleeping cars have upper and lower beds, called berths, which look a lot like built-in bunk beds.
The lower berth is a seat during the day, and the upper berth pulls out from the ceiling at night.
Getting the berths ready for people to sleep in is very difficult;
I have to fold down the seats, hang curtains for privacy, put up a headboard, and make up the bed—all in three to five minutes.
Some older porters can do it in ninety seconds!
It's very important to do everything exactly right,
and I still carry the fifty-page rule book in my hip pocket to make sure I can always refer to it when I need to.
When I was first hired, an older porter taught me everything I needed to know.
He accompanied me at all times on my first train trips to make sure I knew how to properly fold the blankets and towels,
dispose of dirty laundry, and wear my uniform.
He even taught me how to gently wake the passengers by shaking the privacy curtains instead of knocking on the edge of the berth.
I learned quickly, and my paycheck was $16 for working 73 hours my first week.
The average pay for white men is about $19 a week for a lot fewer hours, but a black man is still lucky to have a job like this.
Being a porter can be a demanding job:
porters are so famous for keeping everything spotless that a magazine once said that Pullman cars are cleaner than most homes in the United States.
The job is more than just cleaning up, making beds, and folding laundry though.
If there aren't enough waiters in the dining room, I put on a white jacket and serve food.
I help with luggage, clean the bathrooms, and teach the passengers about train safety.
Porters cut hair, deliver drinks, iron clothes, and do almost everything they're asked.
One day a passenger ripped the seat of his pants, and he didn't have another pair,
so I cut some material from a black umbrella and sewed it over the tear.
The man said it was the best sewing job he'd ever seen!
Most of the passengers are nice and friendly, but sometimes a few of them can be a real problem, which makes a porter's job much harder.
Some men will get into their berths with a cigarette and make a big mess with the ashes.
Other men—we call them whitewashers—spread shaving cream all over the sink when they shave.
Then there are the fussy ladies who never stop ringing the bell to complain about something.
What makes it really difficult is that porters are never allowed to go off duty when they are on the train.
We try to catch a few hours' sleep at night, but if we're needed for anything, we have to get up right away.
Believe me, it's very tiring to work around the clock.
Every night all the porters get together to shine shoes in the smoking room after we've collected the shoes from boxes outside the passengers' berths.
When the people are asleep and no one is listening, we talk about the union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
It's the first black union in the United States, and some porters think that if we join the union, the company will treat us better.
The union wants every porter to be paid more money and insists that we get at least three hours of sleep each night,
but I worry that the company will find out I'm a union member and fire me.
Being a Pullman porter has made the lives of my wife and son easier, and I am very thankful for that.
But I hope my little boy will have a chance to study and become whatever he wants in life.
I didn't have that opportunity, but maybe he will.