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Before the Civil Rights Act, My Great-Uncle from Roxbury Took on Pullman in 1954 — and WonOp-Ed By George (Chip) Greenidge, Jr.

  • Writer: Kristina Takakuwa
    Kristina Takakuwa
  • 22 hours ago
  • 5 min read




As Black History Month marks its centennial, we celebrate towering figures and landmark Supreme Court rulings. We quote speeches delivered on the steps of monuments and honor presidents whose names fill our textbooks. But civil rights history was not written only in Washington. It unfolded in rail yards, workplaces, union halls, and administrative hearing rooms — often because ordinary people decided they would no longer accept second-class status.

 

One of those people was my great uncle and namesake, George C. Greenidge of Roxbury, Massachusetts (b.1912–d.1990).

 

On May 11, 1954, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination announced a landmark conciliation agreement with the Pullman Company. The company agreed that in Massachusetts, it would no longer restrict hiring for porters and conductors based on race, color, creed, national origin, or ancestry. The decision came the same year — and shortly before — the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.


That announcement was not an abstract policy. It was personal. My great uncle filed the complaint in 1953 that led to the agreement. He did not set out to become a symbol; he sought a promotion. A former Army radar instructor, he was qualified for advancement within Pullman’s sleeping-car service. Instead, he encountered a racial hierarchy that had defined railroad labor for nearly a century: Black men overwhelmingly worked as porters — long hours, low base pay, reliance on tips, and the emotional labor of service. Conductors, by contrast, held authority, supervised crews, and earned higher wages. Those roles were largely reserved for white men.

 

The barrier was not merit. It was race.

 

To understand the weight of his challenge, we must look further back. After the Civil War, the Pullman Company became one of the largest employers of formerly enslaved Black men. Beginning in the late 1860s, founder George M. Pullman (b.1831–d.1897) hired thousands as porters for his luxury sleeping cars. At one point, roughly 10,000 Black men worked for the company. White passengers commonly addressed every porter as “George,” a lingering echo of enslavement — calling a Black worker by the owner’s name.

The so-called “Georges” of Pullman endured a disciplined performance of dignity under constraint. In that composure lived both the cost of oppression and the quiet genius of survival.



Long before the terms existed, these men practiced what sociologist Arlie Hochschild (b.1940–) would later define in 1983 as emotional labor — managing expression and feeling for wages — while absorbing the daily diminishment that psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce (b.1927–d.2016) described in 1970 as microaggressions. To be called “George,” regardless of one’s actual name, was routine erasure.  These experiences were foreshadowed in Paul Laurence Dunbar's (b.1872–d.1906) 1896 poem “We Wear the Mask,” later powerfully echoed by Maya Angelou (b.1928–d.2014). The mask was both shield and burden: a practiced smile that concealed exhaustion, anger, and sorrow, yet safeguarded livelihoods and families’ economic futures.

 

The work itself was grueling. Shifts could stretch up to 400 hours a month. Pay depended heavily on tips. Black porters carried luggage, shined shoes, made beds, and served with constant deference. Yet paradoxically, these jobs helped build a Black middle class. Porters became community leaders and organizers, eventually forming the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under A. Philip Randolph (b.1879–d.1979)— the first all-Black labor union recognized by the American Federation of Labor. Still, racial ceilings remained. Black men could serve, but not supervise. They could make the beds, but not command the train.

 

Massachusetts often prides itself on its civil rights legacy. Yet this discrimination persisted here, in the North, in the 1950s. Occupational segregation was not solely a Southern phenomenon; it was embedded in American industry. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) was formed in 1946 as the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce new anti-discrimination laws. It was later renamed MCAD in 1950 when its jurisdiction expanded to cover housing and public accommodations. It remains one of the oldest state civil rights agencies in the United States.

 

Nearly a century after Pullman began hiring formerly enslaved men, that ceiling was still intact when my great uncle filed his complaint. In 1953, Elwood S. McKenney (b.1918–d.2003) determined that there was probable cause to believe discrimination had occurred. He served as the lead commissioner in Greenidge v. Pullman Company, a pivotal case before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. As one of the Commission’s original appointees, McKenney played an important role in shaping its early civil rights enforcement efforts. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, state agencies like MCAD were testing the limits of anti-discrimination law. Each finding strengthened the legal framework that would later underpin federal civil rights enforcement.


Today, as my great uncle’s namesake, I carry forward his legacy in a different arena of public service. As Commissioner and Chair of the City of Cambridge’s newly established American Freedmen Commission and past member of the City of Boston Reparations Task Force,  I now work to document the lived experiences of descendants of enslaved Africans in this country and to recommend pathways toward meaningful repair. Emancipation in 1863 did not come with land, wages, or restitution. Nor did discrimination end neatly in 1954.


If we are serious about equity and inclusion in 2026, we must move beyond commemoration toward accountability. The work is not finished. And the stories and facts — however painful, yet deeply ceremonial — must continue to be told not only during Black History Month but also reinforced afterward through government policy, truth-and-reconciliation processes, and reparative frameworks designed to close the racial wealth gap.

 

Progress has always depended on ordinary people who decide that enough is enough. My great uncle did not seek fame. He sought fairness. By insisting that the conductor was not a job reserved for someone of a different hue, he challenged a lineage of enforced subordination stretching from plantation fields to railroad cars. Civil rights history lives in our families. It lives in the names we carry. In 1954, one of them was George C. Greenidge, a man from Roxbury who refused to accept a ceiling placed over his ambition.


P.S. This article is dedicated to Cyrus Greenidge. 


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George "Chip" Greenidge, Jr. is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and Executive Director and Founder of the Greatest MINDS, a nonprofit dedicated to creating a new generation of civic-minded leaders in Boston. 

You can reach him at george.greenidge@gmail.com or IG georgegreenidgejr. or his website www.georgegreenidge.com.

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JET Magazine 1953 & 1954

Jet Magazine - Pullman Ordered to Promote Mass Negro - October 15, 1953


Jet Magazine - Pullman Company Agrees to Hire Negro Conductors - May 27, 1954


Boston Magazine 2021 

A  2021 Boston Globe Magazine special article from his daughter, Robin Grace Greenidge, about her father, George C. Greenidge. 


George C. Greenidge of Roxbury shattered Pullman’s long-standing racial barrier, opening management doors that had been closed for nearly a century. In 1954, his victory ended Pullman’s 90-year policy, giving Black men across the United States the right to move beyond porter roles.


In 1954, Elwood S. McKenney (b.1918–d.2003) served as lead counsel in Greenidge v. Pullman Company, a significant discrimination case before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. McKenney was among the first commissioners appointed to the Commission, helping to shape its early civil rights enforcement work. Growing up in Roxbury, McKenney graduated from Boston Latin School before earning a four-year scholarship to Harvard University (1938). To help cover expenses, he worked as a “red cap” baggage carrier—ironically with the Pullman Company—while completing his studies, graduating with honors in 1938. He later served as a page in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.  In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army. During his service, he received the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater Campaign Ribbon, the American Theater Campaign Ribbon, the Good Conduct Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.



Later in his career, he became the first African-American presiding justice of a District Court in Massachusetts and served as First Justice of the Roxbury Division of the District Court Department. 

 
 
 

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