Labor Day puts a spotlight on Pullman’s history as residents there look to the future
A year after the Pullman National Monument opened, residents are hopeful that investment in the neighborhood is just beginning.
By Courtney Kueppers
Labor Day puts a spotlight on Pullman’s history as residents there look to the future
A year after the Pullman National Monument opened, residents are hopeful that investment in the neighborhood is just beginning.
By Courtney KueppersOne year after its grand opening, the Pullman National Monument buzzed with activity on Labor Day.
Elected officials gave speeches about the site’s significance in the labor movement, guides directed tours of the sprawling former factory grounds and visitors milled about booths that offered both history lessons and food.
The site’s staff and neighborhood leaders hope this is just the beginning — and that the historic interest in Pullman will spur economic growth for modern-day residents.
“I think we will just continue to grow,” said Teri Gage, superintendent of Pullman National Monument, a large site near 111th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. “I hope by Labor Day next year we’ll see a crowd three times this size here.”
Now run by the National Park Service, the Pullman historic site tells the story of the planned industrial community that built luxury railcars for the country. Magnate George Pullman’s company created homes nearby by the factory that are still standing today. Over the past year, there’s been headway in the ongoing effort to attract a more steady stream of foot traffic to the South Side community in hopes of bringing more investment and jobs to the area.
“We want people to spend their money in this community,” said Ald. Anthony Beale, whose Ninth Ward includes the neighborhood. “That’s what we’re really excited about and we want to continue with that momentum.”
As the neighborhood’s historic sites develop, Beale’s office recently announced support for new projects, including a hotel in Pullman.
“We have a lot of tourism coming — you see them right here today,” Beale said. “If those people can stay in the community, someplace to sleep, someplace to eat … all these things are all working together.”
Part of that momentum can be seen across the street from the monument, where the Pullman Club Coffee Shop had its soft opening on Monday — serving coffee, cold brew and iced tea.
Located on the ground floor of a large historic house on 111th Street, the coffee shop is part of the broader Pullman House Project, which plans to offer visitors tours of several neighborhood residences decorated as they would have been in the company’s heyday.
Standing inside the home’s parlor, Pat Shymanski showed off historic Pullman memorabilia and pointed visitors in the direction of coffee. Shymanski and her husband, Mike, who own the property, have lived in Pullman since 1967.
“It’s good to see people’s renewed interest and their willingness to hear lots of stories,” Shymanski said. “It’s both a historic issue and a modern issue, a lot of the issues that Pullman faced we’re facing again today.”
A vision for a new tourism district
About a mile up the road at the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum — named for the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black labor union — people gathered earlier in the day for a ceremonial groundbreaking of the museum’s expansion. Among those in attendance was record executive Damon Dash, best known for co-founding Roc-A-Fella Records.
The museum, which is closed as it undergoes the major renovations, announced its plans to expand earlier this year, with a vision of being surrounded by “new tourism and hospitality-centered businesses,” according to a statement.
“The goal is to basically increase the property value over here from within,” said David A. Peterson Jr., the museum’s president and executive director. “We want to make sure that the people in this neighborhood feel a part of all of this renaissance that’s going on here.”
The museum has operated for nearly three decades at the corner of Maryland Avenue and 104th Street on the north end of Pullman — a location that was intentional, its founder says.
“This is census tract 5002, the population is 96% African American and whenever anyone talks about Pullman, they never say anything about [it],” museum founder Lyn Hughes said, referring to the north part of the neighborhood. “The motivation to start this place was because the people in this community felt they had no connection and that they didn’t belong and I just decided that I would do what I could.”
Now, Hughes’s museum is planning an expansion that includes a new research library and auxiliary women’s history museum to recognize the role women played in the labor movement.
“We are poised to deliver a living, breathing Black labor historic, cultural tourism district known as ‘Randolph’s Way,’” Peterson said in a statement. “We are confident that the completion of this expansion will simultaneously launch a neighborhood stabilization plan providing employment and economic opportunities for the residents and businesses in our community and beyond.”
The museum plans to reopen its doors by next Labor Day.
The future of telling labor history in Pullman
Meanwhile, Gage, of the National Park Service, said it’s a good time to be talking about labor in Pullman — what she called “ground central for the labor movement.”
“We serve as an inspiration and a backdrop for the modern-day labor movement and we’re really excited to be telling these stories at a time when there is a resurgence in the labor movement and there’s so much union organizing going on,” she said.
Anna Acosta and her partner, Stuart Abram — both Chicago Public Schools teachers — visited on Monday. Proudly donning a red teachers union sweatshirt, Acosta said she wanted to spend the holiday learning more about the city’s rich labor history.
“As a Chicagoan, we really should be prouder and know our history, because there’s been so much that’s started here in Chicago that has reverberated all across the United States of America,” Acosta said.
President Barack Obama recognized the Pullman workers and their historic 1894 strike, which contributed to Labor Day being established as a national holiday, when he declared the site a national monument in 2015.
In a speech in Chicago at the time, Obama highlighted the Pullman porters’ legacy in helping to establish the Black middle class in America.
“These men and women gave their children and grandchildren opportunities they never had,” Obama said, adding that then-First Lady Michelle Obama is the great-granddaughter of a Pullman porter. “Without this place, Michelle wouldn’t be where she was.”
Obama did not, however, recognize Hughes and her museum dedicated to the porters on the north end of Pullman. Hughes felt slighted by the former president, saying on Monday that “Obama threw us under the bus.” But federal legislation introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Robin Kelly in Washington could transform the Pullman National Monument into Pullman National Park, which Kelly said would include Hughes’s museum, “so we’ll all be a national park together.”
Courtney Kueppers is a digital producer/reporter at WBEZ. Follow her @cmkueppers.