Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xi + 267 pp. $46.95 cloth; $17.95 paper.

Abstract

Marching Together uses gender as a category of analysis along with race and class to reinterpret the history of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters from its inception in 1925 until the mid-1950s. Chateauvert skillfully accomplishes four goals. First, she provides a detailed account of the individual and organizational contributions of porters' wives to building the Brotherhood in local communities, belying the union's legendary account of courageous men of color battling a racist labor movement and exploitative corporations on their own. Second, she provides an analysis of the gender norms that governed the Brotherhood's organization and policies. Third, Chateauvert provides a critique of the union's treatment of women porters. Fourth, she provides a portrait of the civil rights activism of the Brotherhood and its Ladies' Auxiliary between 1941 and 1956. Based on a wealth of archival and published sources, Marching Together provides a multifaceted and sophisticated analysis of the way that gender norms and customary practices operated among Northern working-class African Americans.