During the 1920s the Pullman Company was the nation's largest single
employer of blacks, who were hired to work as porters on railroad trains.
Beginning in 1925, A. Philip Randolph, a co-founder of the African
American monthly magazine titled The Messenger, began an aggressive
campaign to unionize the porters. As part of the campaign, one or two political cartoons appeared in the
magazine every month between December 1925 and April 1927. 11 of these
contained representations of "Uncle Toms," the term Randolph used to describe
both the Negro leaders and newspaper editors who served as spokesmen for the
Company's anti-union counter-campaign and all black Pullman porters who were unwilling to
force a confrontation with their employers.
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