10,000 Black Men Named George

This movie is a little choppy, but you try fitting 20 years of turbulent history into a two hour movie. If you don't know about other things happenning during the same period (the Great Depression, for example) the allusions to its effects on the primary storyline are hard to follow. I'd like to see this done as a mini-series, with about ten hours or so to tell the story in full.

Still, if you think that the civil rights movement began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, you will find this movie fascinating. The drive to organize the African-American porters combines civil rights and workers' rights with historical perspectives on the late 1920's and 1930's.

One thing that struck me about this movie is the presence of benevolent White characters. In many African-American rights movies, all Whites are either evil or ineffectual morons. (Think the White assistant principal in Lean on Me). There are many White racists in the role of antagonists in this movie, but there is also the White rep for the AFL, who works to support the growing union.

This movie is about history. Anyone who is interested in African American History or US History in general must see this movie. This movie shows things that we don't learn in our school system or in black history in general. I stumbled upon this movie at the video store looking for a movie to rent. For me it adds to the fight that African Americans have had to go through in the United States. Everything we have has been fought for. Nothing has come easy. All African Americans need to know about the Porters Union - the Brotherhood. This knowledge invigorates and empowers me. I am learning all I can about my history, because no one else is going to teach me. I then have to teach my kids. Thank you for making this movie.

This film is an excellent way to illustrate to the current generations that the historic struggle for civil rights started long before the 1960's. It is also interwoven with the labor movement of other workers and the treatment by big business. While historic, it may be wise for some to pay attention to the current standing of unions and to the fact that unions really made the middle class of today. The dirty tricks of the Pullman company including the "communist threat" are illustrated as they have been in past movies. The actors in this movie do a great job. Duton and Braugher offer stellar performances as usual. Director Ronert Townsend solidly directs the events .

I only knew the name A. Philip Randolph consequentially. As I've read books about Black historical figures and Black history I've come across Randolph's name, but he's always been a tangential figure, almost a footnote. So, to see a movie dedicated to his work is very refreshing.

In the movie "10,000 Black Men Named George," Randolph is played by Andre Braugher who also helped produce the movie. It begins in 1925 with him being forced to step away from trying to unionize Black hotel workers. You have to understand how bitterly businesses hated unions back then. If forming a union was hard for whites, then it was life threatening for Blacks.

Still, as the movie tells it, A. Philip Randolph was approached by a Pullman Porter named Ashley Totten (Mario Van Peebles) about unionizing. The Pullman Sleeping Car workers were almost all Black men disrespectfully and eponymously named George after George Pullman. They were porters on various passenger train routes throughout the country that used sleeping cars made by George Pullman. They dressed sharply and were respected in their communities, yet at work they were no more than butlers on trains who were subjected to all kinds of degradation. Unionizing the Pullman Porters was going to be a gargantuan task.

"10,000 Men" took us through that fight. We didn't get to see every detail of the battle, but we got a high-level understanding of what the Pullman Porters were up against. As expected, "10,000 Men" will make you angry, but this is a story of triumph and a small tribute to Randolph as well as the many other men who banded together against a tyrannical big business.

Enjoyable civil rights saga. While this genre usually has excessive sincerity and unbelievably saintly protagonists, the saga of black civil rights is the great epic of the American 20th century, and it's always stirring to watch. Braugher and Dutton give good performances, the whole thing holds together pretty well. Good background score. Well worth its 90 minutes.