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By 1880, business was booming for George Pullman. Production of his famous sleeper cars was ramping up, and the draftsmen, carpenters, painters, and other laborers who helped him build that empire were hard at work. At a time when there were few workplace protections for people working even the most dangerous jobs, Pullman wanted a way to instill a sense of loyalty in his factory employees, many of whom were European immigrants.

George Pullman may have built a picturesque town outside Chicago for the workers who built his luxury sleeping train cars, but his paternalistic control over the lives of his employees helped spark one of the biggest and most contentious labor actions in American history. His company also relied on Black workers – most often porters and maids. Although those jobs helped establish a Black middle class, the workers endured racism and discrimination on the job. They, too, organized, and in doing so paved the way for the civil rights movement.

By 1925, the Pullman Company employed 12,000 porters. In its first several decades, the company hired only Black men for the position, which served as a kind of on-site concierge for railroad passengers. But Black women were also working for the Pullman Company as maids. Though smaller in number, the maids, as well as their stories and their contributions to Pullman unionization efforts, have often been overlooked.

Chicago was growing by leaps and bounds throughout the 19th century. The frontier town quickly grew into the largest metropolis in the Midwest. But as Chicago’s profile and population grew, a hidden killer was taking lives. Sewage and waste was being dumped into the Chicago River and polluting Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. Officials were left with no other option but to embark on a daring design to reshape part of the natural world – and reverse the flow of the Chicago River.

It might be hard to imagine that a river that once had an unfortunate, gurgling branch called &ldquoBubbly Creek” could be teeming with anything other than, well, muck. But after decades of work to clean up the mess, one walk along sections of the Chicago River system reveals a much more optimistic picture.

In the mid-to-late 1800s, a relatively new town called Chicago was rapidly growing, but it had a problem. Thanks to polluted waterways and lack of a sewage system, waterborne diseases were running rampant, killing thousands of Chicagoans over the course of a few decades. At the heart of the problem was the Chicago River itself, which carried waste toward the city, not away from it. So city officials came up with a bold plan: what if Chicago reversed its river?

Chicago was growing by leaps and bounds throughout the 19th century. The frontier town quickly grew into the largest metropolis in the Midwest. But as Chicago’s profile and population grew, a hidden killer was taking lives. Sewage and waste was being dumped into the Chicago River and polluting Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. Officials were left with no other option but to embark on a daring design to reshape part of the natural world – and reverse the flow of the Chicago River.