launched his business.

He would ultimately name it Pullman's Palace Car Company.

It built sleeping cars, a comfortable and luxurious way to travel long distance.

- [Sue] The Pullman Palace car was beautiful inside.

Let's start with a beautiful polished wood, the Pullman Palace cars had luxurious deep carpet.

Your eye might be drawn up to the gas lamps and lanterns that were inside the car.

So everything about the car said you're in a plush hotel on wheels.

- [Narrator] Pullman would lease his cars to the various railroads calling it "luxury for the middle class."

Well into the 20th century, the company's logo showed perhaps its greatest asset, the black porter.

- On the Pullman car, you were treated like royalty.

The porters might have to take linen to the people living in a sleeping car.

They would have to use a berth key in order to make the bed come out for the sleeping car.

- [Narrator] Alongside the team of porters often came a Pullman maid.

- On the train, the Pullman maid was responsible for greeting women passengers and their children to get them set up.

The maid would then be tasked with the responsibility of taking care of the children.

And then they would also provide manicures, hair care and help them to dress.

But the maids were not as prevalent as the porters because there would be only one maid per train and only on the deluxe or cross-country trains.

- [Narrator] George Pullman hired recently freed slaves and their descendants.

On Pullman sleeping cars, the team of black porters and maids catered to passengers' every whim.

- Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and George Pullman hired them.

He thought that a class of ex-slaves would make the most deferential porters on his cars.

- It certainly shaped the way in which passengers understood their interactions with porters and maids and that very deeply rooted kind of Antebellum racial sensibility.

That's for sure.

- While the rigid Jim Crow system that existed in the South didn't exist here, there were still limits to just how far they can go.