Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality . By Eric Arnesen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. 332. $39.95. Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925–1945 . By Beth Tompkins Bates. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xiv, 275. $17.95, paper.
两本书研究美国铁路业中黑人的核心角色与种族歧视，揭示铁路劳工斗争如何成为更广泛的民权与种族平等斗争的试验场。
“Not only were the histories of the ‘Negro in America’ and railroading inseparable, ” says Eric Arnesen in his superb study of African Americans and the railroad industry, but “so too was the history of railroading predicated upon racial divisions of labor” (p. 5). These two fine studies describe both the central role of African Americans in America's railroads and the place of racial discrimination in rail employment. More, they show how railroad labor struggles were the proving ground for the larger struggles for civil rights and racial equality.