The Black Pullman maids are front and center in an exhibit at Chicago's Newberry Library

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A number of African American women travelled the country and took on challenging work during the difficult Jim Crow era.

But they were overshadowed by the Black men who worked for the same Chicago-based train company. A new exhibit in Chicago  is putting these women in a well-deserved spotlight. CBS 2's Jim Williams has their story.

Miriam Thaggert had a mission several years ago. So she came here to Chicago's Newberry Library.

"I was in the Newberry fourth floor reading room looking for narratives about the Pullman porters, and I came across this file that had the application of a woman who was applying to be a Pullman maid," Thaggert said. "And I remember just being startled. Pullman Company had maids?"

Indeed, the Pullman Porters have been well-chronicled: Black men who travelled the country working on the famous Pullman sleeping cars. 

But Thaggert, a professor of African American literature at the State University of New York-Buffalo, dug deep into the Newberry's archives and discovered the Chicago-based company also employed Black women as maids on the trains.

Why was most of their story lost to history?  

"That was the question that animated my research," she said.

One reason is numbers: there were always more porters than maids.

"And there is a photo that opens up the exhibit. We see a single individual Black woman surrounded by five Pullman porters. And I think that one image tells the story of about the numbers," she said.

The Pullman maids served white women passengers and their children. They styled hair and gave manicures, among other duties. Thaggert found diary entries, an employees handbook and pay records from the early 20th century.

You see here some of the average salaries: $79, $64, $99 dollars a month. Their experiences included racism and mistreatment during a time of Jim Crow segregation as described in a maid's letter.

"She wrote a letter to the Chicago division explaining how a white conductor was being verbally abusive and harassing her," Thaggert said.

"If any items went missing along the train trip, sometimes the women as well as the porters were accused of theft."

All of this can be seen in the Newberry Library's exhibit "Handmaidens for Travelers: The Pullman Company Maids" curated by Professor Miriam Thaggert, who's also the author of a new book "Riding Jane Crow". This little known story is now brought to life.

"If you think about the cultural narratives we tell about the U.S., the railroad is pivotal to the stories we like to say about the United States, but we don't normally usually include the narratives or the experiences of Black women."

Professor Thaggert returns to the Newberry Library on June 29 to discuss the exhibition and her new book. The event is free and open to the public. 

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