Cheers to a storied union (nation's first African-American union organization)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_12280983

Claire Martin
The Denver Post
Posted: 05/03/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT


Michael Dawson, left, and Virgil Bentley toast each other at M&M's bar, the historic home of the Protective Order of Dining Car Waiters in Five Points. (The Denver Post | Cyrus McCrimmon)


These days, the tiny bar is called M&M's, but that's just nomenclature as far as the regulars are concerned.

"Everyone still calls it the Porters and Waiters Club," says owner Margie Collins, who is one of the M's in "M&M's." (The other is her stepdaughter, Mary.) "We always knew this was the Porters and Waiters Club."

Not many remember its original formal name: The Protective Order of Dining Car Waiters, Local #465 — the Denver chapter associated with A. Philip Randolph's famous Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation's first African-American union organization.

The order is listed as the space's tenant in yellowing receipts (Mountain States Telephone, Public Service Co.) tucked away in a closet down the hall.

Doris Hammond, who was born six years before the club opened in 1937, remembers watching her uncle and cousin, both railroad cooks, climb the black wooden staircase to the club.

"On Sundays, especially, when people came out after church, this was the place to socialize," she said.

FULL story at link.