http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/shake-shack-tipping-racist_us_586e8881e4b02b5f85879a61?

Quote:

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Tipping, he explained, started after the Civil War when restaurants and the Pullman railroad company successfully petitioned the U.S. government to allow them not to pay their servers and instead ask customers to pay them tips.

"Therefore, no one could say they were being enslaved," he told podcast host Dan Pashman. "And no surprise, most of the people who were working in service professional jobs and restaurants and Pullman train cars were African-American."

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Any truth to this?

http://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/08/history-of-tipping.html

Yeah, I think oragator's link debunks that. I'm not surprised that huffpost makes something up to talk about how racist America was.

In fact, most of the railroads were in the North and there weren't many blacks in the north until the early 20th Century, so I doubt that most railroad porters were black early on. They were most likely immigrants.

Actually, George Pullman specifically targeted former slaves to serve as porters on Pullman cars and the porters were almost exclusively black for decades.

I can't speak to the argument about tipping.