Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A documentary film with the title Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle. There are four prints of the film (2017.55.116.1a), (2017.55.116.2a), (2017.55.116.3a), and (2017.55.116.4a), all of which are color 16mm acetate film with bilateral area optical sound. The documentary details the history of the Black Pullman Porters who organized for the right to unionize and form the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. It begins with a brief history of the Pullman Car Company and their reliance on exploited Black male labor. Narrated by the activist, educator, and wife of a Pullman Porter, Mrs. Rosina Tucker, the film uses a combination of archival footage, photographs, and first-hand accounts of former Pullman porters to explicate the working conditions that Black male Pullman Porters endured prior to the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1937.

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