This historical documentary finds a missing link between slavery and the Civil Rights movement in the story of the first black trade union, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The first Pullman Porters were ex-slaves; indeed, by some they were reviled as Uncle Toms extending the persona of slavery into the twentieth century. They were demeaned, as well, by white media stereotypes of fawning, grinning servants-even as they made the Pullman Cars the elegant "hotels on wheels" they once were, playing every role from personal butler to amateur psychiatrist. But behind the scenes, the Pullman Porters were a training ground for a new generation of black leaders. Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle is an oral history, told by retired porters and narrated by Rosina Tucker, the 100-year-old wife of a Pullman Car porter and a union organizer. From the days when, as she puts it, the most a black man-even many who were college educated-could hope for was a job with George Pullman's company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters came to constitute one of the most militant sectors of the black community. Organized in 1925 by A. Phillip Randolph, the Brotherhood waged and won a twelve-year struggle for union recognition, and played a leading role in the Civil Rights movement from the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott through the 1963 March on Washington. (C.L. Dellums, late uncle of Congressman Ron Dellums, was in the forefront, and appears in the film.) Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, a tribute to the human dignity that fueled this struggle, also leaves us to ponder another link, between labor and Civil Rights.