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Philadelphia's Lords of the Docks: Interracial Unionism Wobbly-Style
By Peter Cole, Western Illinois University
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Figure 1: Black labor organizer and activist A. Phillip Randolph's The Messenger regularly praised Local 8 for its commitment to racial equality and industrial unionism. From The Messenger, April 1922, p. 396.
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In the early twentieth century, several thousand Philadelphia longshoremen organized themselves into a powerful, durable, and effective labor union. These men, who proudly belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World, proved willing and able to employ the Wobblies' direct action tactics to improve their lives. Perhaps even more impressive is that Local 8 was one of the most, perhaps the most, racially inclusive union of its era. Few institutions of any sort at that time in America could claim to be more committed to interracial, multiethnic unionism than Local 8. For ideological and pragmatic reasons, Local 8 stood for racial and ethnic integration on the waterfront. Uniting a diverse workforce was essential to the union's success. Indeed, the union collapsed when Local 8 was split along racial lines. This article looks at the rise and fall of the Progressive Era's most integrated union.
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Jake had just found a job on the New York waterfront unloading rotting pineapples. Most of Jake's coworkers were black, with a few white men who were not regulars on the docks. Although told to stay inside the pier's gates for the entire shift, Jake went out for lunch anyway. A white man came up to Jake and, addressing him as "fellow worker," started talking. The white man worked for the union that had struck the pier where Jake was working and wanted Jake to join his union. Jake declined.
"Nope, I won't scab, but I ain't a joiner kind of a fellah," said Jake. "I ain't no white folks' nigger and I ain't no poah white's fool. When I longshored in Philly I was a good union man. But when I made New York I done finds out that they give the colored mens the worser piers and holds the bes'n a' them foh the Irishmen. No pardner, keep you' card. I take the best I k'n get as I goes mah way. But I tells you, things ain't none at all lovely between white and black in this heah Gawd's own country."1
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Jake, the protagonist in a novel by Jamaican-born author and communist Claude McKay, reveals a great deal about labor and race in the Progressive Era. Typically, as W. E. B. Du Bois and many others note, race relations in the early twentieth century were awful, white racism making the lives of black Americans a struggle merely to survive, and the workplace was a focal point of this prejudice. In Northern cities such as New York, longshoremen were divided along racial and ethnic lines, with African Americans consigned to the worst jobs and excluded from Irish-dominated labor unions except during strikes, when Irish workers feared black strikebreakers. In Southern ports, with the important exception of New Orleans, longshoremen also were racially divided, with white workers taking the best jobs despite making up a minority on the docks. As Jake's remark suggests, in Philadelphia black and white men worked side by side, both on the docks and in their union. |
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