Bud, Not Buddy - Lesson 9
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Last updated over 1 year ago
6 questions
from Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis
I took one of the papers out, it said:
ATTENTION RAILROAD WORKERS
THE NEWLY FORMED GRAND RAPIDS
BRANCH OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF
PULLMAN PORTERS (1) WILL BE HOLDING AN
INFORMATIONAL MEETING ON WEDNESDAY,
JULY 23, 1936. ALL INTERESTED PARTIES
PLEASE COME TO 2345 COLDBROOK AT 9:00.
REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED.
YOU KNOW WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST—
PLEASE KEEP THIS AS CONFIDENTIAL (2) AS POSSIBLE.
It was starting to make sense. I said, “Mr. Lewis, are you one of those labor organizers?”
He laughed. “Not really, Bud. I’m picking these up so we can pass them out in Grand Rapids. We’ve been negotiating to get a union for the Pullman porters for years now and nowhere in Grand Rapids will print these flyers for us. The only place that would do them is all the way in Flint. You were running away to a pretty hot town, young man.”
1 Pullman porters: African-American men who assisted passengers on sleeping cars of a train
2 confidential: Secretive
Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bud, Not Buddy. Laurel-Leaf Books, 2004, pp. 138–139.
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