MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In her short work of crime fiction, “Since You Went Away,” Frankie Y. Bailey draws on the history of Pullman porters to set her story during the 1946 demobilization of troops travelling by train from New Orleans to Chicago. Having the train as the setting for the murder of Ruby Jeffries, a Southern white woman, initially evokes nostalgia for the mystery cozy tradition of Murder on the Orient Express with its closed circle of suspects and class distinctions. However, Bailey’s use of Walter Lee Stuart, an African-American Pullman porter, as her detective challenges nostalgic notions of order and stability common to classic crime fiction. While Walter eventually solves the murder with the assistance of a passenger, he faces suspicion, obstruction, and prejudice because of his race. The threat of imminent violence against the young, black suspect, as white passengers shout racial insults and train staff worry about a “lynch mob” creates a sense of urgency and tension that drives this story to its clever conclusion.

Throughout the story, Bailey uses Walter’s experience to depict historical realities of Pullman porter’s lives, such as the long hours, low pay, their treatment by white travelers “as a piece of equipment, just like another button on a panel” (LeRoy) and the fact that they were all addressed by the name “George” (after George Pullman), a name “based in the social standards of slavery itself” (Blakemore). Bailey uses the history of American race relations to rewrite the classic train murder plot by telling it from the perspective of a person of color who would have been invisible, criminal, or a stereotype in crime fiction from an earlier era. Her use of an “outsider” perspective complicates and challenges readers’ perceptions of crime and justice, expanding the traditional murder plot to consider larger issues of social justice.