Elizabeth

“Along with their special blue blankets porters got blue pillows, just to make sure a conductor never had to rest his white head on a pillow used by a black porter. Fare receipts were color-coded, too, with a P on those handed out by porters. And Pullman offices in Miami and other districts maintained two sign-in windows: an indoor one for conductors while the porters’ was out in the elements.52d That obsession with keeping things separate was even more apparent in the early days of the dining cars. A curtain was drawn around porters while they ate, creating a small coloreds-only space like the one used for the rare Negro passenger.e And the Pullman Company preferred light-skinned Negroes on its dining cars, in contrast to its dark-skinned porters. A hiring directive on porters clearly stated, “Do not employ a light complexioned man”; it did not explain why.53 Hiring light-skinned waiters probably was a throwback to slave days, when softer-toned Negroes got favored jobs in the Big House, while the directive on porters seemed aimed at accentuating the wall of demarcation between served and servant.”
― Larry Tye, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class