"Porter as a term to describe someone who moves goods during transport has been around for centuries"Porter as a term to describe someone who moves goods during transport has been around for centuries. My understanding is that "porter" relates to men who worked at ports of call and would (as longshoreman do now) load and unload ships.
When trains were invented, and began being used to transport goods, porters were the manual labor to get this done before all the mechanization and so forth. When Pullman created the luxurious Pullman cars, it was a conscious decision to staff the car attendants with black men, since at the time most wealthy people were comfortable with black labor (basically stewards). The term was carried over.
However, over time being a Pullman porter came to be considered a good job comparatively, and there's a whole PBS documentary about families looking back on their grandfather's work fondly. This doesn't mean they were always treated well, and closing the "porter" era is perhaps a clean way of breaking ties with that old, problematic Jim Crow legacy.
I agree -- just don't hear it used much in the USA for the reasons discussed.
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