Ike Morrow:
Tacoma's Legendary Soul Train EngineerIntroduction by Harvey Schwartz
Morrow became a father confessor to a new generation of Black and White longshore workers. He was awarded a handsome plaque for this service by Tacoma’s African American Longshoremen’s Association in the 1980s. In applauding his contribution to the waterfront community, the plaque’s inscription characterized him as “head engineer of the soul train” in a reference to his influence and to the celebrated fact that his four longshore sons then worked for him.
I interviewed Morrow in late January, during his last week on the waterfront. From the tower that served as his command center overlooking the North Intermodal Yard that he helped create, he tirelessly aided my work and even arranged a strad ride for me with one of his top drivers, Daryll Dixon. Here is Morrow’s story.
Isaac (Ike) Morrow
Edited by Harvey Schwartz
I was born in a little place called Frogsville Bottom in Choctaw County, Oklahoma in 1940. My dad’s family was sharecroppers, but by World War II my dad couldn’t survive sharecropping and he couldn’t find other work in Oklahoma. He came north when he was recruited to work at the Hanford nuclear project in Eastern Washington. His first day there he worked mixing construction mud. He had no idea what the Hanford project was, but he knew he was making more money than the nothing he was making in Oklahoma.
The real beginning for our family was Eastern Washington. My dad was special. It took him almost two years to get his whole family up north. He had five kids, just like I did. I was brought north when I was four or five years old. My dad would get a little money and drive south, and in those days if you were Black you didn’t stop at a Motel 6 or nothing like that. You’d stop for gas and keep on going.
It took my dad three trips to bring his whole family north. He taught me many things, like how to work and all about responsibility. He said, “If you’re man enough to make a baby, you’ve got to be man enough to take care of a baby.” And that’s what he did. He didn’t just leave us down south.
My dad taught me how to deal with discrimination, too. He said, “Don’t cry about discrimination. You look at the mirror in the morning. You know you’re Black, and therefore you have a problem. Your job is to figure a way to get around that problem. You got to go over it, around it, or through it, or sometimes you got to put it on its ass.” That was my daddy. I’ve lived my life by that rule. In other words, I didn’t turn everything into a Black and White issue. If you didn’t like me, I dealt with it, and I never used anything for an escape.
Dad always had at least two jobs, maybe three. My mom worked until I was 13 or 14. We always had food on the table. One day, to beat the heat and the cold in Eastern Washington, dad just packed us up and came over here to Tacoma. He was a natural-born heavy equipment operator and wound up working 25 years for McChord Field. I guess I am my father’s son, because that’s what got me goin’ on the waterfront—my ability to handle equipment. In my early days in Local 23 I became a real good crane driver.
I went into the Marine Corps in 1959. That’s how I got on the waterfront when I got back to Tacoma. James Cook, a guy in my Marine outfit, was a reservist from here who worked as a longshoreman. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him I worked in the bar at the Winthrop Hotel. I’d worked my way up in another place from dishwasher to bar manager. Cook asked me what I made, and I told him. Then he asked me if I ever thought about being a longshoreman. “Come on down,” he urged, “And try it some time.” And I did. That was 42 years ago.
I started coming down to the waterfront when I had a chance—a day here, a day there. When I went home from my first day throwing these big flour sacks there was nothing left in my tank. My fingers were raw and every joint in my body ached. It was a horrible day, but I refused to quit.
At first I hated the waterfront because it was dirty and the people were so rough in those days. But it was good money and I got lucky and made the bench, which meant you became a permit man. I got picked, I eventually learned, partly because of my work attitude and partly because they mistakenly thought I was the grandson of a legendary longshoreman named Barney Ruckers.
Actually, the only thing that kept me on the waterfront is that I got pissed off. Once the guys realized I didn’t belong to anyone, they kind of ostracized me. Nepotism was strong back then. For six months hardly anybody would talk to me or teach me anything. The Black guys ostracized me same as the Whites. So I decided I’d show them. And that’s why I’m still here today!
I came to love the waterfront. Eventually all four of my sons became longshoremen. They earned their way in through a high school program. When I started I was just a little shit, a 145 pounder tossin’ 150-pound sacks and 450-pound bales of pulp. It was never easy, although it didn’t take me long to start to get it. My wife’s support helped, too.
Then I ran into a Black guy named Willie Lee. One day, he says, “I’m goin’ to show you how to be a longshoreman.” And he would yell and scream and harass me. I was with that man so much he made me a damn good longshoreman. It seemed like all the Black guys then were huge, 6’2″, 6’3″, 240, 250. Here I was 150 pounds. I couldn’t muscle it like the big guys. So Willie Lee taught me how to use every ounce of my body for leverage.
To use your body you had to use angles. One time we had this 450-pound bale of pulp wedged in tight on its edge. These big guys were down in the hold sweating with peaveys trying to get it in place. Finally Harvey Matthews, the hatch tender, came down. He wasn’t a big guy. There were two bands holding that pulp that you could get your hands on—one in back, one in front. Matthews reached back with two hands, grabbed the bands, squatted down, humped the bale with his body, picked it up, and shoved it in place, using his legs and everything. That’s leverage. I never forgot that lesson.
Back when I was still new you didn’t talk with your mouth because they’d send you down the road. I can recall how this White old-timer, Bud Mostrom, used to show me so much disrespect. One day he asked this other young man to work a pulp ship with him. We were the only two younger guys there. Mostrom looked me right in the eye and said, “I picked a young stud, because some of these kids can’t handle it.”
I was seething. I told my partner, Willie Lee, “OK, you big mother—Willie weighed 275—today we’re goin’ and we ain’t stoppin’.” We humped and hollered all day long. That last hour we took 60 ton of pulp in 55 minutes. Then we had to go to chow and come back. I had thrown so hard my arms locked up. I said to Willie, “What am I gonna do? Listen to this S.O.B. talk some more?”
Well, I went back, and Mostrom approached me and said, “Hey, kid, you’re all right.” After that he always talked to me in a positive way. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stand me. I guess I just had to prove myself. That’s how most of those old-timers were. Years later, when women began to come on the waterfront, I thought “no” at first. Then, as the work became mechanical and gentrified, I said to myself, “Well, that’s what they once thought about you,” changed my mind and decided I’d never hard-time women on the waterfront. In fact, I’ve come to admire them.
I had my own little civil rights movement on the waterfront in the 1960s, teaching people to respect me. Every time I’d see the pictures of the dogs and the hoses attacking Blacks in the South I’d get mad, and Lord help the first guy who crossed me the next day. The union itself wasn’t prejudiced, but we had our individual problems on the waterfront.
For instance, just after Martin Luther King died we were working rubber when our gear broke down. Back then you waited for repairs. I heard these White kids down below from where I was. They were talking about shooting Black people. Foul names came up. I got madder and madder. Finally I exploded. I grabbed a bear claw, which is like an axe handle with a triangle end with nubs to pull the rubber. I jumped down 12 feet to where these guys were and landed on boards. It sounded like a gun shot.
I screamed, “Come on!” I’d tried to hold it all in, but I’d had enough. I got these four guys in one corner and I was going to kill somebody. All of a sudden I heard this soft, caressing voice. “Take it easy, Ike. It’s not worth it.” It was Dick Tulare. He was 6’4″, 280 pounds, a gentle giant. After much talking, he finally touched me and massaged my shoulders. I sighed, looked at those guys, looked at Dick, and said, “Thank you, brother.” He was a white guy.
Tulare kissed me on the side of my head and said, “Let’s go.” He led me upstairs. There was no more noise from downstairs the rest of the night though! That’ll be in my mind as long as I live, because I was about to commit murder over words. Later on we all became good friends.
I became a foreman in 1972. Because I’d seen a Chinese seaman killed in a lashing accident, I made myself one of the best lashing foremen on the waterfront. Back then the company that sponsored you—in my case, Stevedoring Services of America (SSA)—generally was the company you ultimately went steady for. I always thought I’d be an SSA man, but they kept dangling jobs in front of my face and those jobs would disappear. Finally, in 1981, the Port of Tacoma approached me, and I said, “I’m going to take their steady job.”
The Port was the first company that had enough courage to look past my color and look at my work ethic. That’s why I’m so loyal to them. They’re as big o’ jerks as anybody else, but they gave me that first shot, and I’ve busted hump for them. That’s why, around 1983, I worked hard to give the Port its start toward its North Intermodal Yard, which is an accomplishment I’m very proud of.
Here’s how the intermodal program came about. In the early 1980s our biggest line was Star Shipping. They’d come into town and dump 300 cans [containers] at Pier 4 where I was foreman. The next day there’d be 46 Burlington Northern (BN) truck drivers at our gates plus our regular traffic. We’d be overwhelmed with everybody pissed off and the customers unhappy. One day I’m in my office, and here is this Star agent, Judith Novik, talking about taking her business someplace else. So I told her, “Maybe I can help.”
“Where,” I asked, “are these guys going?” She said, “Up to Tukwila” where the BN rail yard was. “Well,” I says, “why can’t we make rail delivery right here instead of putting all those trucks at our gate?” She said, “Why can’t we? Let’s give it a shot.” We talked to management. The Port had a little rail setup with 21 cars in the North Yard and 10 elsewhere. We had house and dock tracks. I said, “I’ll make it work.”
I talked to all the longshoremen. The Port gave us the next ship. We had all these rail cars waiting when the ship discharged. Fast as the cans got on deck we loaded the cars using straddle carriers (strads). Our tallest strads could maneuver right over the cars. It worked beautifully. The pressure was off the doggone gate. Then, after months of success, the BN said, “That’s enough. You’re not going to get any more railroad cars. You’re cutting into our load center profits.” That really ticked Judith Novik off. I don’t know where she applied pressure, but six months later they relented and I got those cars again.
Then it just kind of blew up as people got interested. Maersk Line came to town because of our intermodal yard. Everybody up and down the coast had little mom and pop operations with a few conventional cars, but no intermodal dock. But here the Port started expanding in our North Intermodal Yard because Maersk bought into Tacoma’s program. When Maersk got to town, they initially took the car loading process out of our hands. This was really insulting. We’d been loading rail cars successfully for years.
Maersk fumbled around for several months. The last train they loaded was 300 cans in 16 hours. That seemed the proper time for me to step in. “Look,” I said, “just give us three sorts of containers—20 footers, heavy 40 footers for bottoms and light 40 footers for tops—and get out of our way.” What they were doin’ was flooding the yard with different kinds of equipment so nobody could move. Our adjustment cut out all that traffic. The next week or so we moved 571 cans in one shift. Then we started setting records like crazy.
Of course, every system in the North Intermodal Yard was put together by the ILWU. At first nobody knew anything about loading railcars. But we’d have a meeting, me and my guys. And they just worked their asses off. Now you’ve got all those lines—Evergreen, Maersk—because we were so productive. It’s been a boon to Tacoma and to the men. Once we got up and cranking it opened doors for the entire coast, too. But we were the grandfather of them all.
I had a terrific crew of drivers, ground men, and clerks in those early days. My six crack pioneer strad drivers were Harry Dixon, Dave Ginnis, Roger Marshall, my son Terry Morrow, Ramo Natalizio, and Tony Tomal. We used to give synchronized shows loading railcars before we attracted customers. Our strads were painted orange, so the group got nicknamed the Orange Angels. Early on we also employed a great top pick driver to complement our strads. His name was Signal White. There should be a statue of those “Magnificent Seven” drivers, as they were called, down at Local 23.
The zenith was 1987. We set a record of 937 lifts in one shift. We’ve done over 1200 moves in a shift since then, but that 937 was made with just three tracks and six three-high machines that could go over railcars. Later we had eight tracks and more strads. Some of those 937 runs were over two miles long. When I look back on it now it still blows my mind.
After a while most guys called me “Pops.” They seemed to dub me a kind of a father figure. White guys, too—even more White than Black—would ask me to counsel them. I wanted to help, and I didn’t believe in polarization, which is horrible. I tried to get guys together. We formed a group called the African American Longshoremen’s Association (AALA) so guys could at least have somebody to talk to.
Our union back in those days lacked any line of communication, even for White guys. If you had a problem with a foreman or a guy, who did you talk to? I tried to get people together so they could talk and solve problems. In the 1980s some Black guys got transferred up here from Portland, which was racist. They had chips on their shoulders. I tried to settle them down and urge them not to make every situation a Black and White issue, because every situation is not that way. Eventually the AALA awarded me a plaque in appreciation of my work. That really touched me.
Looking back, this waterfront has been good to me. It’s given all my sons a job. And the waterfront is about the only place I know where a man, especially a Black man, can be as much of a man as he wants to be. That’s worth its weight in gold. Sure, there are racists on the waterfront, but the union is not racist. If it was, how come I was so successful? And how come my son Terry was elected Dispatcher, one of the most powerful jobs on the waterfront? How could Willie Adams get elected International Secretary-Treasurer? You get those votes because the union people respect you, not because you’re White or Black.
Today we have many new people on the waterfront who don’t know anything about unions. If you’re going to come into this industry, you have to be taught where you have been, where you are now and where you are going. You have to be taught the longshore way. We can only do this by education. I think the 2002 lockout was a wake-up call to us. Now everybody knows we’re here and what we control. We better be ready for 2008. Don’t sit there thinking you’re a fat cat. You’d better be ready for a fight.