Walter Williams: The Fight for Black Equality On The L.A. Waterfront

The Dispatcher, February 1999
Edited by Harvey Schwartz

WALTER WILLIAMS

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1918. My mother brought me out to California with my brother when I was a year old. I’ve spent practically all of my life in Los Angeles. My mother was the sole breadwinner for the family. It was kind of rough. I had to see some of that depression, had to feel some of it. The depression raged from ’29 right on through ’41. I got to be nine or 10 years old and I started delivering newspapers to help out. When I was about 11 I’d go down to the produce industry to earn a few extra pennies or a buck or two. Young as I was, I was always kind of tall and strong, and I would unload and load trucks for the produce merchants.

I got to the place where I could drive the trucks even when I was 13 or 14 years old. After I became an adult, my brother got me a Teamster job driving for Ranch Market. I got a good dose of what at least some of the trade unions were all about, because in 1939, a month after I got the Ranch Market job, the Teamsters Union decided that it was too much to have two Black guys operating trucks for this one market.

So I lost the driving job and became a foundry worker at Magness Brass and Lead. In that foundry I began to see how broad race discrimination really was. The job didn’t pay much—it was non-union—and they made certain that Black people understood that they were low man on the totem pole. They had separate wash rooms, locker rooms and showers. Employment opportunities were very limited. But Mexicans and Filipinos immediately were considered to be semi-skilled workers. They were molders and that paid double what we laborers were making. And they were considered as Caucasian. They changed and showered with the Whites.

I really got interested in unions after I got booted out of my job through the Teamsters, who were in the AFL. I heard that the new CIO was a union that didn’t discriminate. I went to the headquarters for the Los Angeles Industrial Union Council, CIO, and talked to a few people. They said, “Do you think you can organize the foundry?” I said, “I’ll sure as hell make an effort to organize it, because there’s no job opportunities for Blacks, and if we got the union in there, it would help.”

Ultimately the foundry fired me for union activity. I had gotten all of the Black guys signed up and had started signing up some of the White guys. A CIO official said, “How would you like to become an Industrial Union Council organizer?” Next thing I knew I was working under Slim Connelly, the CIO leader in L.A., and Ralph Dawson, the top CIO organizer. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, CIO, finally organized Magness Brass and Lead. I didn’t finish the job, because I went to work for CIO, but I helped. I worked for the CIO Council for about a year. Then I went into the defense industry.

I went to Cal Ship at San Pedro and learned how to weld. We’re talkin’ about ’41-’42. We had trouble there because the Boiler Makers, who had jurisdiction, didn’t want Blacks in the union. They had a race restriction clause in their constitution and they would not agree to let Blacks become regular members. “If you want to work in the shipyards,” they said, “you have to be a member of the auxiliary.”

I never attended an auxiliary meeting. That was like paying to be discriminated against, or subscribing to it. A friend introduced me to a committee that was beginning to function and was interested in trying to remove the discriminatory practices. Before I knew it, I found myself at the head of the committee. We decided to organize a no-dues-paying campaign.

We took the position that we were not going to pay to be “Jim Crowed.” So we picketed the auxiliary to keep the Blacks from paying their dues. “If you want your dues,” we said, “you’re going to have to give us a regular membership.”

We petitioned President Roosevelt’s Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) for a hearing. FEPC came out to Los Angeles and held the first West Coast hearing that involved the Boiler Makers and the shipyards. We charged them with discrimination because of race. The FEPC decision was that the union and the companies were not to approach us on the matter of paying dues, and they were not to disturb us on the job.

Later we had to go to court anyway because the union declared that they weren’t paying any attention to the FEPC. We were just about to win a legal decision in Los Angeles when the Supreme Court ruled that the practice of the Boiler Makers was discriminatory. As a result, they took us in. We were now accepted as regular members.

Soon I left Cal Ship and went to work for a short time for a steel company that was making military landing barges. Then I heard about longshore opening up. It was 1943. I said, “This is a damn good opportunity to become a longshoreman. That holds more prospects for permanent work than making landing barges, because after the war that’s over.” So me and a friend made a beeline to the longshore industry.

Local 13 and the employers already had things rigged up so we wouldn’t stay too long. I remember signing a commitment to being terminated at the end of the war. I didn’t like it, but you had to get your foot in the door. I observed quite a few Black guys on the docks, but I found out that very few of ’em were regular longshoremen. Most of them were working extra like I was.

A large number of White people in the union didn’t want Blacks in. It was obvious we were resented. Some of the regular longshoremen would call for replacements rather than work with Black guys. And there were fistfights all over the damn place.

One thing that kept battles going was that a lot of the White longshoremen insisted on calling the drum on the winch the “nigger head.” It was painted black and had a little white or red dot in the center. I wound up going before the local executive board to tell them they should pass a motion that offensive terminology should be abandoned. I said more and more guys were going to get hurt, and that this sort of thing didn’t do anything to help build unity in the union. They passed a motion saying the gangs were not to use that kind of terminology in trimming gear.

I don ‘t know if this anti-Black attitude stemmed from a Southern background and feelings a lot of Southern people bore, or whether it was because the old­timers considered us invaders who weren’t there in large numbers when the union first organized. There weren’t a lot of Black people living in San Pedro and Wilmington then.

After I was there for a while, I began to hear Whites raise the question, “What are you guys going to do after the war? You’ve already signed the statement to allow yourself to be deregistered.” Some were arrogant about it. “This union was lily-white before you guys came down here,” they said, “and after the war it’s going to be lily-white again.” I told ’em,” Well, you know, a lot of things can happen. I plan to work down here.”

I knew that if you worked on a job for over six months you were establishing job rights. I had learned what unionism was about through my association with the CIO Industrial Union Council. So shortly after we were there for six months we began to raise the cry that we wanted some kind of a membership. The local was collecting money. I said, “If you collect money, you’re going to give us something. This is taxation without representation.”

We began to organize among ourselves. We’d meet anywhere from once to four times a month. There was a real hard-core of guys who would be least likely to be intimidated and could think real well. But we had the support of all of the Black guys there. They knew we were organized. At one time we thought of putting out a bulletin, but we knew the racists in the union would accuse us of dual unionism. So we said we won’t do that.

We agreed to try to keep aggressiveness down on the waterfront, because we knew that if we did succeed in staying there, nothing would be gained by acting big and bad. We had to try to win the friendship and confidence of the people we had to work with. So usually when a battle got to raging between a Black and a White guy, the Black guy didn’t start it. But we also made up our minds that we weren’t going to be taking any blows without giving ’em back. As a result, I think we won the respect of most of the White guys down there.

After the war there was a movement to deregister us. One of the local’s officials referred to us in a union meeting as a “special interest group.” I went down to the mike and said they could call us a special interest if they wanted, but our interests were basic interests. Recommending that 500 guys be deregistered meant you were getting rid of about 90 percent of the Black guys in the local, and to me it was discriminatory. “There was nothing,” I said, “really special about anybody wanting to hold on to a job and not be made the object of race discrimination.”

At the next meeting they deregistered us. This was in 1946. L.B. Thomas was the proponent of the action. Bill Lawrence was the one White guy who stood up for us. After the motion was passed he spoke against it. He was very political, so it took guts to stand up in Wilmington Bowl and do that. Lawrence said he felt it was morally wrong and more than likely legally wrong, and that we could survive together. He urged them to reconsider, but it didn’t do any good.

After we were deregistered we took the name Afro-American Labor Protective Society (AALPS). We had to consider legal action. Some wanted to make the employers and the union the targets of a joint suit for damages as well as reregistration. I proposed that if we sue, we sue for the jobs and to hell with the damages, because if you believe in the union, you’re going to hurt it as little as possible.

We were split down the middle. So I told the guys I won’t be joining any action to collect damages. A few guys did sue and collect money, but I wasn’t one of them. I influenced most of the guys not to sue for damages. The idea, I felt, was to get back in the industry and to help build the union. I did sign up as part of a number of plaintiffs who filed a suit for the jobs.

From April 1946 to December 1949, when I was away from the waterfront, I wound up being a hod carrier. That was back-breaking work, but I didn’t have much choice. I was on that job when I got notice that they were going to reregister us. It was sort of an out-of-court arrangement.

In the 1950s I learned how to operate winches. What got me into this was that I was standing in the ship’s hold one afternoon and a White guy named Pelt taps me on the shoulder. We were good friends. He says, “You better not take a job in the hold. Somebody’s going to drop something on your head. I said, “How do you know?” He said, Don’t worry, I know. Do anything except work in the hold.”

Pelt had supported our struggle all the way during the deregistration. I sure don’t want to paint the picture that it had been solidly a situation of Black against White. There were a lot of White and Mexican guys, guys of all ethnic backgrounds, really, giving us good, solid support. My partner and I would be talking on the job, and they’d come out to us and say, “We realize you guys are in a fight, but hang in, you’ll win. You guys aren’t by yourself.” This kind of thing kept a lot of us encouraged.

Pelt may have saved my life. I’ll never know. But his warning prompted me to decide to operate winches so I’d be up out of the hold. I didn’t know the first thing about them. I told the guys to stand clear, and it didn’t take ’em long to know that I wasn’t working safe! I just hung in until I learned. As time went by, guys would say, “I’ve got to give you an ‘A’ for trying; I got to help you.” So then White guys would come up and teach me. Ultimately I drove winches for a number of years before I started operating cranes.

Around 1960 we took a delegation up to San Francisco to talk to Harry Bridges. Blacks weren’t being promoted when it came to making hatch bosses out of longshore gang members. They weren’t paying any attention to seniority or anything. We wanted to find out where Harry stood, and whether we could expect any support. He said, “Go back. You got a local union back there. You got local autonomy. It’s a democratic organization. Go back and do it in the local”

I was angry—I said to Bridges, “We’re out­numbered twenty to one. How the hell do you expect us to do it?” He said, “You got to educate the guys.” I said, “That takes too damn long. We’re being cheated. As dues paying members, we feel we’re entitled to an equal opportunity on all levels.” He says, “I’m just not going to upset Local 13 over the race question.”

Harry was looking at trying to keep the whole damn ship afloat. There was pressure with L.B. Thomas on one side and Bill Lawrence on the other. They were at the meeting. It could have caused one hell of a rift. But things did change for the better. Maybe Bridges did some things behind the scenes to help.

I say this because I remember a time when I went to a longshore caucus in San Francisco. The Local 13 rank and file had said “Send Williams up as a special delegate to raise the question of race discrimination.” The local’s leaders watered down the gesture by limiting my per diem. The question of race discrimination and Local 13 hadn’t come up yet when my per diem ran out. Harry got wind of it. He says, “We’re going to see about that.”

Harry called a separate meeting with the Local 13 people and chewed out the president and the rest of the delegates. He· said, “That’s not the way we’re supposed to operate and you guys know it. If Williams comes up as a delegate, he’s supposed to come up just like all the rest of the delegates. Give him his per diem or the International’s going to do it and you’re going to pay us.” He wasn’t playing it political then—he just met ’em head on. So maybe he did do some things to help us behind the scenes, too. By the way, the local did pay my per diem and I did address the caucus.

In the 1960s· the struggle became getting Blacks promoted to crane operator status. I went out on my own by taking volunteer crane jobs. They’d run out of regular crane operators, and anybody had an opportunity to try. All they could do if you couldn’t operate was just call for your replacement. We had one Black Local 13 crane driver, but he got sick. I figured there would be no Black guys operating cranes. So I says I might as well start breaking in, and then maybe try to open up the way.

Although we cannot claim total credit for causing all the integration seen later in Local 13, I think our efforts were largely responsible for the changes that took place. Just our letting people know we were concerned, we weren’t giving in, and we’re going to continue to press the fight might have had nuisance value. It’s a hell of a way to put it, but I think we won friends as we went along. We won respect. I could feel it.

I could see attitudes softening. On two occasions different White brothers approached me. I don’t know the names of either of these guys, but they knew who I was because I would get up, at the mike and raise hell. Both of them said almost identically the same thing: “You know, Williams, I may never learn to like you, but somehow I respect you.”

I think the whole damn thing was an educational process. The struggle, the tempers lost, the actual physical battles with people nursing their bruises made a few of ’em say, “Well, why shouldn’t he get PO’d? I acted like I wanted to spit on him.” I had one brush just before I left the waterfront in 1981. The guy was totally hostile before we had a run in. After that, he was very friendly. I don’t know what kind of phenomenon you would type that to be, but I guess it’s just that certain things like that have to happen.

I hope all of this means that it will do the union some good. I hope all of the bad feelings we experienced one toward another because of race is water under the bridge. Things have improved in Local 13. I just hope we’ll be a stronger union as a result. It would be tragic for these differences still to be made when some guys are Mexican and some other guy’s a Black man and somebody’s something else, because we need each other. We’re going to have to have the kind of unity we always used to talk about to survive.