February (in the U.S.—October in the U.K.) is African-American & Black History Month[1]. To honor this important annual event, the Bentari Project hopes you are enjoying these stories and thoughts about some truly heroic men and women.This is the story of two men who both lived in or around Chicago. They were not contemporaries, but their lifetimes did overlap and their lives do share some interesting lessons. They are railroad baron George Pullman[2] who invented the famous sleeper railroad car and Oscar Micheaux[3], the son of former slaves, who was a pioneering African-American author and film-maker.

Oscar did not let institutional racism block his vision. He was a successful farmer who ran a 500-acre homestead. He formed his own publishing company and sold his books door-to-door. And he started and ran his own movie production company. Oscar had been a shoe-shine boy as a youth. And he once worked as a train porter—meaning that he was expected to fetch sandwiches, mend torn trousers and behave subserviently to the white railroad patrons. It is quite likely that some passengers hailed Oscar as “George” when they called him to be their waiter. Such was the habit of many white passengers in mock honor of the train car’s inventor, George Pullman.

Pullman was our nation’s largest employer of former slaves. He thought that former plantation slaves from the south would show the type of respect and acquiescence that he desired for the business men customers riding in his “Palace Cars”. Pullman painted his life’s legacy with more than a broad racist stripe. He is remembered for cruelly breaking union worker strikes and ruling his “empire” like a feudal baron.

Oscar Micheaux, the hard-working former porter and entrepreneur, is recognized as a creative genius. Oscar’s 1924 film Body and Soul introduced Paul Robeson[4] to the big screen. Without Oscar’s tremendous life-time achievements, who knows the greater distance we must have been forced to journey along the road to freedom.

Thank you, Oscar. May your heart and soul live on in our memories. May your gumption add some gusto to the grist of our daily lives.

Image: I scanned the image on this page from the actual stamp that brought us a greeting card from Cousin Sue—who lives in Chicago! On June 22, 2010, in New York, the US Postal Service™ issued a 44-cent Oscar Micheaux commemorative stamp (See: www.worldstampnews.com)

[1] See: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history-month 
[2] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pullman 
[3] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux 
[4] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson