Above photo: Police confront workers ahead of the West Coast Waterfront Strike, in San Francisco, California, on May 8, 1934. Underwood Archives / Getty Images.
When they started strategically resisting the bosses’ divisive tactics, meeting racism with solidarity, San Francisco longshoremen went “from wharf rats to the lords of the docks.”
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University and the author of Dockworker Power: Race & Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018). In this interview, Cole and Jacobin’s Benjamin Y. Fong discussed the dedication and success of the longshore workers in the 1930s and ’40s in overcoming racial division on the docks.
Clips from this interview are included in Episode 6 of Organize the Unorganized (among others), which also includes archival interviews with the first International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) president, Harry Bridges, and the first black president of ILWU Local 10, Cleophas Williams.
Benjamin Y. Fong: What were racial and ethnic tensions on the docks like in the ’20s and ’30s, and how did employers exploit those tensions?
Peter Cole: Every port city is a bit different in terms of demographics. But in San Francisco, which was the birthplace of the ILWU and the key to the big strike of 1934, there were very few African Americans. There were some Asian Americans, but due to persecution against the Chinese community, [the Asian American population] declined from the nineteenth century. In the Bay Area, at that time, there were very few African Americans — under 5 percent before World II and the Great Migration. That doesn’t mean that race and racism weren’t present, of course.
San Francisco was a strong union town. San Francisco dockworkers went on strike in 1919, as in many other American workplaces, cities, and industries after World War I. That union was racially exclusive, like other unions before it in San Francisco. And not surprisingly, employers used African Americans and black West Indians as strikebreakers in 1919. That was one of the reasons that that strike failed. And then that ushered in an anti-union era in San Francisco, which was and would be the biggest and most important port on the West Coast for decades.
Employers had used divide-and-conquer tactics very effectively. And many white workers were hung up on racism. And, of course, California was the heart of the anti-Chinese xenophobia of the nineteenth century. That also played into the antiblack racism that persisted. And so employers cleverly, cynically but brilliantly, played race in San Francisco on the waterfront. And as a result, San Francisco dock workers suffered the consequences. They lost their union. Their wages went down. The shape-up persisted. All the bad things that happen when workers are weak occurred on the San Francisco waterfront in the interwar era.
Benjamin Y. Fong: In its early years, how did the ILWU work to combat racial and ethnic division?
Peter Cole: Every port is different, and some ports are more powerful than others. But in San Francisco, which again was the heart of this union and port industry on the Pacific coast, Harry Bridges was the key longshore leader, and he was a committed anti-racist. He had learned that from his experiences as a sailor, where he saw persecution of Indians and others in his early journeys.
He grew up in Australia, born and raised where the Aborigines were horribly treated and where a “white Australia” policy was in effect, meaning that non-white people could never immigrate to Australia. He came to the United States, and he saw a society that was not so different from the one he had left. As a young sailor, he ended up in New Orleans in the early ’20s, where he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and where he experienced and participated in multiracial activism. When he moved to San Francisco a few years later, although not a member of the Wobblies anymore, he took that with him that first experience with multiracial radical unionism. We see the presence of the Wobblies in other ways, including in the motto of the ILWU, of which Bridges was the first president: “An injury to one is an injury to all,” which, of course, is the IWW motto.
But Bridges was not alone. There were also communists on the waterfront, as well as other forms of leftists. It was really the white leftists who were at the forefront of fighting against racism in the union. They were saying this before the “Big Strike” [of 1934] in their waterfront newsletter. They said, “Look, we got killed in 1919.” There was an appeal to people based on their pragmatism, but also on their ideology.
So they integrated the gangs after they won in San Francisco in 1934. There weren’t that many black workers to integrate before World War II, but nevertheless, the gangs that had been racially exclusive became racially inclusive. And then, during the World War II years, when black migration to the Bay Area skyrocketed and several thousand African Americans ended up working on the waterfront, they fought very clearly for racially fair treatment.
For example, when a naval officer makes racist statements toward a black longshoreman who’s a member of Local 10, the union basically drops their tools, complains, and says, “This guy is a racist, and he’s mistreating our members.” So they stand up for racial equality. They’re even pushing other industries in the Bay Area to become more racially open. In San Francisco, they helped promote black hires for streetcar driver positions. And there was a case where a black streetcar driver was beaten up, and dockworkers on their off time rode the streetcars with him to defend him. And there are other clear examples where ILWU members are fighting racism on the waterfront, but they’re also fighting racism in other workplaces.
Benjamin Y. Fong: You were careful to preface that whole answer by saying it depends on the specific docks that you’re talking about. What was it like elsewhere?
Peter Cole: It varied wildly. In Los Angeles, which wasn’t as large as it would become in terms of a port city, during the war, black membership in the union rose. But after the war, Local 13 in LA essentially purged its black members, or most of them, using the excuse that they had less seniority. In San Francisco, a larger port at that time, some white conservatives in the union tried to do that too. And the local [Local 10] rejected it in a legendary vote.
Portland, Oregon, despite its contemporary reputation as being a progressive place, has a long history of racism. Portland was the absolute worst dock local in the ILWU for decades, where essentially African Americans weren’t allowed in. And that was a problem because it obviously gives the lie to the claim that racial equality existed in the ILWU. Bridges hid behind the defense of autonomy — that locals get to decide for themselves. It’s worth noting that Tacoma, a bit north of Portland, actually remained in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) when the rest of the dock locals in the West left the ILA for the ILWU in 1937.
Bridges was mindful that he could “lose” Portland’s Local 8 if he pushed too hard. However, when they had the power, Bridges and the international did push locals to be better when it came to race and ethnicity. So for example, in 1945–46, there were a few Japanese Americans who, after getting out of internment camps, tried to get into the warehouse local in Stockton, just east of San Francisco. And the local refused to let them in. Famously, Lou Goldblatt, head of the warehouse division, had made a very public stand in 1942 criticizing the internment order of FDR, one of the few institutions to do so. In ’45–46, they say, “We’re going to put your local into receivership unless you allow these Japanese Americans into your local.” And in that instance, it worked.
Benjamin Y. Fong: How did the dockworkers “march inland” to organize warehouse workers?
Peter Cole: So the “W” in the ILWU used to stand for “Warehousemen’s” (though in 1997, they degendered their name, and now it’s the International Longshore and Warehouse Union). The ILA technically isn’t gone from the waterfront in ’34, after the big strike. It won’t be until ’37 that the ILWU will form. And so in ’36–37, it’s very clear that there’s energy not just on the docks, but right next door, literally across the street. Because a lot of warehouses were dockside. Often people from the same neighborhoods, the same communities, the same families, worked in both longshore and warehousing. This is also still before the automobile and suburbanization, so working-class people often lived close to where they worked — with the exception of African Americans, who often didn’t have the privilege to live near where they worked due to racial segregation.
Warehouse workers were an obvious target, but also an obvious threat. If the longshore workers were union, but across the street you have nonunion members who get paid way less, who work longer hours in dangerous conditions with far less control over their work, it’s only a matter of time before the dockworkers themselves will be under assault. Everyone understands that. And so they literally just had to cross the street. In the San Francisco–East Bay, warehouse workers became Local 6 of the ILWU. Local 10 was the longshore local in the Bay Area.
The so-called March Inland was very effective. Tens of thousands of warehouse workers will join the ILWU in the ’30s and in the World War II era. However, there’s a massive pushback on the part of AFL [American Federation of Labor] unions, both the ILA, the East Coast/Gulf Coast rival to the ILWU, and also from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who claim that warehouse work is jurisdictionally under their command. Dave Beck, head of the Teamsters at that time, goes to war with the ILWU to prevent them from expanding the warehouse campaign in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and Los Angeles. Teamsters fight dockworkers in numerous situations, using their trucking contracts as leverage too. Of course, the employers were trying to oppose the organizing of warehouse workers, but in some ways the Teamsters were the real obstacle.
But Warehouse expanded nonetheless, especially in the Bay Area, and later down in LA, where Local 13 dockworkers spawned Local 26 warehouse. The ILWU wanted to make a union that included longshore, warehouse, and even agriculture, because so much of what was being shipped was agricultural products in California and other places.
Benjamin Y. Fong: What was the role of leftists in building the ILWU?
Peter Cole: The Left was essential to the growth of the ILWU. Everyone knows that Harry Bridges was a lefty, but he was not alone. Bridges becomes a leader because he’s deeply respected by people in the Bay Area and beyond. But the same was true for other leaders, including Henry Schmidt, who was one of the key leaders in Local 10, and Germain Bulcke. A number of the left leaders in the ILWU and in Local 10 were pivotal. They were essential for multiple reasons.
One is that they were the ones who were bringing this energy and commitment. They were the ones who were saying, “We’re not doing this just to enrich ourselves.” Harry Bridges didn’t earn very much compared to every other international president and was seen as very modest. They also were the ones who were fighting hardest to be racially inclusive. And so there were disagreements within the ILWU about race, but Bridges makes it very clear from the top how that’s going to play.
That also proved very important in the ’40s and then ’50s in organizing Hawaii. Hawaii is a plantation economy, and the workforce is overwhelmingly Asian and Asian American farmworkers. And so the AFL doesn’t want to touch these people for multiple reasons. But the ILWU does. It actually revolutionizes politics in Hawaii, and it becomes very important to the unionization of the entire state of Hawaii.
And the role of leftists in this is essential. As I said earlier, the motto of the ILWU is “an injury to one is an injury to all.” The industrial unionism, the anti-racism — these are the core principles that ILWU members are committed to.
Benjamin Y. Fong: How did the break with the CIO in 1949 affect the ILWU?
Peter Cole: The ILWU is deeply hurt by the break with the CIO. Harry Bridges was deeply persecuted going back to the late ’30s as an immigrant, but he wasn’t alone. A number of the leaders in the ILWU were tried on various charges during and after World War II. And thousands of ILWU members were “screened” (that was the term used during the Korean War) for being “disloyal” so that they couldn’t work. This also affected sailors and other people in the maritime industry during and after the Korean War.
The ILWU is a small regional union. It has rivals to the east in the ILA and the Teamsters for jurisdiction over the warehouse. Being isolated, it has obvious problems. The ILWU is devoting resources to defending its leaders and other members who are being persecuted by the government and the police as well. The ILWU needs allies like we all need allies, but it is increasingly isolated. That isolation weakens the ILWU greatly in several ways.
As technology was changing in the 1950s and into the ’60s, with what became known as containerization, but later more typically is called mechanization or automation, the ILWU also had a weaker hand. It therefore had a weaker ability to negotiate with employers during this transition to a radically new way to move cargo around the world, which revolutionized the entire world economy in multiple ways. The ILWU was the first union in the world to negotiate over containers. If the ILWU had been stronger, maybe those agreements would look different. These are obviously hypotheticals.
The other major part of the Red Scare is the Taft-Hartley Act, which drastically hurts the ILWU and many other unions. But unlike many other unions, the membership overwhelmingly stands with its leadership, even though Harry Bridges claims to not be a communist. Using Taft-Hartley, the government forces the membership to vote on a contract they didn’t want to vote on in 1948. The entire membership refuses to vote. Over twenty-six thousand people, and not a single ballot. So they basically said, we’re not going to play unless our leaders stick. And so the membership remains united. But when you’re under attack, not just from your bosses but also from the government and your fellow unionists, everything’s harder.
Benjamin Y. Fong: How would you say the CIO moment informed the formation of the civil rights movement?
Peter Cole: Nationally I would say that the CIO moment, in this case represented by the ILWU, is critical in the civil rights movement. First and foremost, the ILWU integrates its ranks. By the mid ’60s, Local 10 in the Bay Area is majority black. As Martin Luther King Jr famously said, “What good is it to sit at the lunch counter if I can’t afford the hamburger?” By giving economic power to black working-class people, the ILWU empowered them, but it also encouraged them to push harder. They integrate the Local 34 clerks, who handled the information flows. There was internal union integration. And they gave support throughout the ’50s and ’60s to fighting for civil rights in the Bay Area.
During the Birmingham sit-ins and protest movement in the spring of ’63, in which King is arrested, the ILWU has a stop-work meeting where they shut down the waterfront for a day, and they hold a rally in coordination with black churches where twenty thousand people attend — the largest civil rights rally in San Francisco up until that time. King becomes an honorary member of Local 10 and visits in 1967. King was a longtime supporter of unions, and the next year he would be killed for supporting a union in Memphis, Tennessee. Nine members of the ILWU attended King’s funeral in Atlanta in 1968, including African American members of Local 10.
Subsequently, Local 10 will be the host of a “Free Angela” rally when Cleophas Williams, the first black president of Local 10, opens up the hall in 1971 for them. It will also be a leader in the anti-apartheid struggle. Nelson Mandela will thank the ILWU for its support. In 2021, Angela Davis will become an honorary member of Local 10, and say, as I have said too, “If I couldn’t have been a professor, I would’ve loved to have been a longshore or warehouse worker in the ILWU.” The ILWU is the definition of civil rights unionism in a lot of ways. Despite the warts because they are also real.
Benjamin Y. Fong: What lessons can we take from the formative period of the ILWU for the present moment?
Peter Cole: Even though it’s a small union in terms of member numbers, the ILWU demonstrates what unions can do. First and foremost, they can deliver good earnings for the members. I am a proud member of the American Federation of Teachers, and one reason is that I get paid better than some of my nonunion fellow professors. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting a little more in a capitalist economy. ILWU workers actually are very well-paid working-class people generally, and they’re still a small part of the total costs in shipping. They went from, as Bruce Nelson once put it, “wharf rats to the lords of the docks.” And that radically improved the lives of tens of thousands of people and consequently their families and their communities.
They demonstrated not only short-term gains but also long-term ones — the fight for racial equality, the fight for internationalism, and the fight against fascism. Dockworkers in the Bay Area refused to load US weapons for fascist Chile in 1978 and authoritarian El Salvador in 1980. There are many examples of how this union can not only agitate for its members but can join all sorts of causes domestically and globally.
All this despite the fact that the ILWU was really hurt by red-baiting. The destruction of the left-led CIO unions was really devastating in a lot of ways. That’s why the civil rights movement takes another two decades. It could have happened in the late ’40s were it not for red-baiting. That really delayed the racial equality struggle, which easily could have launched right after World War II. A. Philip Randolph could have been the leader of that. And so I think we see that there are clear positive lessons, but also things to avoid.