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The Model Town of Pullman

Remaking Political Imagination in the Industrial Age

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Friedrich Gratz, August 1, 1883�https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.28412/

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Pullman, Illinois: Model Town, Company Town?

Images from the Chicago Historical Society

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/pullman.html

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J. W. Mays, Pullman Car Porter, 1894

Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/2016696467/

Porter handing young woman a glass of water in railroad sleeping car. Photo by the George R. Lawrence Co., copyrighted 1905. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c16409

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W. A. Rogers, “The Vanguard of Anarchy,” July 21, 1894 https://www.loc.gov/item/92515993/

G.A. Coffin, “Scenes in and about Chicago,” Harper’s Weekly, 1894 https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b22437/

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Civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the oval office of the White House after the March on Washington, D.C., 1963

A. Philip Randolph, Leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters stands to the right of President John F. Kennedy

Photo by Warren K. Leffler, 1963 Aug. 28. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.04413

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Questions to Consider

Why did many Americans experience the rise of industrialization, with its significant economic growth, as a crisis for the future of the nation?
Was George Pullman’s effort to create “a new worker” built on democratic view of the world?
Who should have economic, political, and social rights?
How could people excluded from those rights gain access to them?
How did the Pullman strike and boycott transform the role of the law, workers, immigrants, African Americans, and women in this new world defined by the rise of large-scale corporations?
What new ideas about law and the power of contracts emerged?
How did ideas about race, gender, and culture come to define people’s position in relation to the law and access to economic opportunities?