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Black History Exhibit Premieres In Miami-Dade Museum

(WSVN Channel 7 News)

SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) --A local museum now has a special exhibit that highlights the contributions African Americans made to the railroad industry.

The Gold Coast Railroad Museum displayed the exhibit, just in time for Black History Month.

"The African American Experience" contains hundreds of artifacts that illustrate the evolution and influence the African American community has had on the railroad industry.

When railroad service was at its peak in the US, some train lines carried about 200,000 people everyday across the country. Many African Americans were attendants on these trains. "The African Americans didn't just work on the train cars. They worked in the train stations, freight stations. They worked in the dining cars," said Michael Hall, the executive director of the Gold Coast Museum. "They were basically people who took care of you on the sleeping cars that would fold down your bunk and make your sheets and also serve you in the dining car, back in the days when train travel was almost like taking a cruise ship today. It was very elegant."

Pullman porters were hired to work on sleeping cars. In addition, many African American men and women helped clear swamps to lay railroad tracks for the trains. The pullman porters are considered by many to have contributed to the development of the black middle class in the US. "African Americans did not have the opportunities that we all enjoy today, and being a pullman porter was really one of the few good jobs," Hall said.

Alan Laird was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to the museum in Southwest Miami-Dade. Laird, the son of a railroad worker, donated many items to the exhibit and collected artifacts from the 1900s to the 1980s in order to illustrate the major role African Americans played in a huge part of American history. "Everybody traveled on the train, and everything you bought in a store, everything in commerce traveled on the train. The train was America," said Hall.

The Gold Coast Railroad Museum is open seven days a week.