African Americans on the B&O Railroad

WYPR - 88.1 FM Baltimore | By Sheilah Kast,

Published February 9, 2017 at 12:26 PM EST

African-American inventor Elijah McCoy patented a device in 1872 to regulate the flow of oil to locomotive cylinders and pistons.

Courtney Wilson, director of the B&O Railroad Museum tells us about an exhibit about the jobs available to black Americans during the railway’s heyday. Stable jobs like porter and cook paid relatively well, but demanded long hours and often difficult conditions.

Correction: It was A. Philip Randolph, not E. Philip Randolph, who organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union.

Sheilah Kast

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am. Originally, she hostedWYPR's Dupont-Columbia University award-winning Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast from 2006 - October2015. She began her career at The Washington Star, where she covered the Maryland and Virginia legislatures, utilities, energy and taxes, as well as financial and banking regulation. She learned the craft of broadcasting at ABC News; as a Washington correspondent for fifteen years, she covered the White House, Congress, and the 1991 Moscow coup that signaled the end of the Soviet empire. Sheilahhas been a substitute host on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and The DianeRehmShow. She has launched and hosted two weekly interview shows on public TV, one about business and one about challenges facing older people.

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Maureen Harvie

Maureen Harvie is a producer for Midday with Dan Rodricks. She began her career at WYPR as an intern for the newsroom, where she covered issues ranging from medical marijuana to off-shore wind energy.

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