Objective/context:

this paper is the result of a doctoral research that sought to analyze the trajectories of black and white railroad workers in the interior of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, in the cities of Rio Claro, São Carlos, and Araraquara between 1930 and 1970. The research focused on a reading of how railroad companies in the 20th century, in addition to interconnecting regions and bringing workers of different races closer together, influenced their ascension and mobility in the economic, political, social, and cultural fields in relation to other workers of the period. It aimed to analyze the trajectories and memories of these workers, to understand how black and white workers related to each other considering race and class issues.

Methodology:

based on the methodological concepts of memory and oral history, approximately 75 former Companhia Paulista railway workers were interviewed. Direct and indirect documentary sources such as books, articles, period newspapers, and other printed materials were also used in the research.

Originality:

the article advances the analyses presented in terms of possible intersections impregnated by oral history under the criterion of ethnicity and their position occupied in the world of work.

Conclusions:

the idea of a railway family was adapted to the myth of racial democracy, in its double meaning: although internal conflicts may exist, recognition as railway workers opened the way for all of the workers in the environment outside of work. The ambiguity between color and class coexisted in the trajectory of the interviewees as a relationship of implication, not of causality. The reduction of distances by means of informal cohabitation had an emotional background that was present even in those relationships that would be more characteristically impersonal. The fetish of equality among railroad workers functioned as a mediator in class relations, which contributed to the fact that conflictive situations frequently did not result in factual conflicts, but in conciliations within the railroad company.

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