Theodore Kornweibel

This seems to have been conceived as a short accompanying text to go with an album of photographs of African-Americans working on or using the railways, but the text evidently rather took over from the pictures, and the book as published is a substantial and fascinating bit of railway social history. The photos are a nice bonus, but anyone who risks life and limb by picking up this monstrously heavy tome will do so for the sake of Prof. Kornweibel's detailed, wide-ranging account of the US railway industry's relationship with black people from slavery right through to to the civil rights era. He looks at every sector of railway employment, but also at the role of railways in providing a stable focus for black communities, at the experience of travel when segregated waiting rooms and "Jim Crow" cars were the norm in southern states, and at the way the relationship between railways and black people was represented in both popular and high culture.

Some aspects of the story, like the collusion between management and the unions representing white skilled workers to keep black workers out of grades that might put them into line for promotion, are fairly predictable. But Kornweibel's research makes it all-too-clear how widespread these practices were. Less familiar, and even more shocking, was the extensive use of slave workers and (post-emancipation) of leased convict gangs for dangerous and arduous construction work. This is clearly still a contentious issue. Kornweibel mentions that he has acted as expert witness for descendants of slave workers who are trying to sue the successors of the railways they worked for.

More surprising, at least to an outsider, is the other side of the coin: although black railway workers were poorly treated, especially in the way they were excluded from any sort of advancement, many of them did have jobs that were secure and reasonably well paid compared to other opportunities that were open to black people at the time. Kornweibel notes how many railway workers were active in black churches and community organisations, and how often they were able to buy their own homes and get their children through school or college. Of course, to achieve that, they had to accept the role that was assigned to them by their white colleagues and managers, and refrain from politics or union activity.

I have to confess that, worthy as this book is, the author's name does undermine its seriousness a bit for me: for a British reader, "Theodore Kornweibel, Jr." is so exactly the name an American professor ought to have, whether in P.G. Wodehouse or in Monty Python. Moreover, once you get Gershwin's line about "The things that you're liable to read in Kornweibel..." stuck in your mind, it's a losing battle to keep a straight face. Grossly unfair to the Prof., who can't help having a silly name, and probably pronounces it "Corn-weavill" anyway.… (more)

This book is an excellent tribute to the role of African Americans in the railroading industry. It ranges from a 1836 call for "able bodied negro men" to be employed in the construction of railroad from Pensacola, Florida to Columbus, Georgia, to a survey of how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed the railroad landscape for African Americans. The book is filled with intersting photographs and the author has made the subject both broad and fascinating. Although blacks were oftened relegated to lesser positions, many times these people became the heart of the black middle class. Even in higher positions, although Class I railroads did not permit black to become locomotive engineers for much of the 20th century, he found a picture of an black engine crew running a locomotive in 1950 on the Mississippi & Alabama Railroad. The author is both a professor of history and a railfan, and it shows with the considerable attention to detail and his love of the subject. Besides relating the pretty well known story of porters, who were all black, he delves into such topics as railroad imagery and experience in the text of African American songs.… (more)