This paper uncovers the contradictions between official ‘anti-racist’ union principles and local practice by exploring the ways that racism shaped a racially progressive union’s politics. Using interview material, it centres on the past and present experiences of African American union members working as longshoremen in southern California. Contrary to accounts that locate racism and the racial division of workers solely as a practice utilised by capital, the author argues that it was the labour union local itself, not capital, that readily relied on racism to undermine Black workers, thereby recreating the very same destructive forces that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s principles purported to oppose.
I would like to thank all of the longshoremen who were kind enough to give me a glimpse into their lives over the years, especially Craig Bagdasar, Elbert Kelley Jr, Tony Salcido, Clovi Jean Good and Adrian Watkins. I would also like to thank Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, Edna Bonacich and Stephanie Luce for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.
2.
Du BoisW. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (New York, Library of America, 1903); C. J. Robinson, Black Marxism: the making of the black radical tradition (London, Zed Books, 1983).
3.
BonacichE., ‘A theory of ethnic antagonism: the split labor market’, American Sociological Review (Vol. 37, 1972), pp. 547–59; Bonacich, ‘Abolition, the extension of slavery, and the position of free blacks’, American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 81, no. 3, 1975), pp. 601–28; Bonacich, ‘Advanced capitalism and black/white race relations in the United States: a split labor market interpretation’, American Sociological Review (Vol. 41, 1976), pp. 34–51.
4.
I gained access to the waterfront via my association with a well-known and respected veteran longshoreman who has worked in the industry for over thirty years. This longshoreman was active in documenting the struggle for Black equality in the union. He accompanied me to some of the interviews, helped me arrange meetings with other longshoremen and showed me around the waterfront. With his gracious help and connections, I was introduced to a number of the leaders of Black workers who struggled over multiple generations for racial justice in the ports of southern California. Other contacts were made utilising a snowball method.
5.
Retired longshoreman Tony Salcido has compiled an extensive collection of union documents, along with a wonderful oral history collection of Local 13, at the Urban Archives collection at California State University, Northridge.
6.
FairleyL., Facing Mechanization: the west coast longshore plan (Los Angeles, CA, Institute of Industrial Relations, 1979), p. 2.
7.
FletcherB.GapasinF., Solidarity Divided: the crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2008), p. 15.
8.
NelsonB., ‘The “lords of the docks” reconsidered: race relations among west coast longshoremen, 1933–61’, in Waterfront Workers: new perspectives on race and class (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 1998, ed. WinslowC.), p. 155.
9.
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), available at: http://www.ilwu.org (visited 15 May 2007).
10.
KimeldorfH., Reds or Rackets? The making of radical and conservative unions on the waterfront (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988).
11.
Nelson, op. cit., p. 158.
12.
The first Black longshoreman to work the southern Californian docks was Governor Davis, who began working on the waterfront in the late 1930s.
13.
Chicano workers faced discrimination in the early years, but, unlike African Americans, were not fully excluded during the foundational years of Local 13.
14.
See Nelson, op. cit., for an excellent body of work on the history of Local 13 and race relations in the longshore industry.
15.
Nelson, op. cit., p. 165.
16.
Walter Williams, now deceased, was married to the former head of the NAACP Myrlie Evers Williams, the widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
17.
Keith Mayweather, interview conducted by author (13 January 2007).
18.
Ibid.
19.
Craig Bagdasar, interview conducted by author (31 October 2007).
20.
For a more in-depth analysis of Black resistance in Local 13 and the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by longshoremen against Local 13, see E. Bonacich and J. Alimahomed-Wilson, ‘Headway for African American workers in south Los Angeles’, in Post-Ghetto: re-imagining south Los Angeles (forthcoming, ed. Josh Sides).
21.
Oral history of Walter Williams, interview conducted by Tony Salcido, Urban Archives of the ILWU, California State University, Northridge (10 November 1988), p. 12.
22.
Ibid., p. 77.
23.
Ibid., p. 73.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Elbert Kelley Jr, interview conducted by author (23 May 2007).
26.
Oral history of Elbert Kelley Jr, interview conducted by Tony Salcido, Urban Archives of the ILWU, California State University, Northridge (7 May 1996), pp. 14–15.
27.
In 2005, Local 94’s racial breakdown was as follows: 11 per cent Black, 58 per cent white, 29 per cent Latino, 1.5 per cent Asian American and 0.5 per cent Native American.
28.
Jerome Johnson, interview conducted by author (13 January 2007).
29.
Adrian Watkins, interview conducted by author (12 March 2007).
