Copyright by Clifford Farrington 2003 The Dissertation Committee for Clifford Farrington certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Biracial Unions on Galveston’s Waterfront, 1865-1925 Committee: ––––––––––––––––––––––––– Mark C. Smith, Supervisor ––––––––––––––––––––––––– Janet Davis ––––––––––––––––––––––––– Shelley Fisher Fishkin ––––––––––––––––––––––––– Neil Nehring ––––––––––––––––––––––––– Shirley Thompson Biracial Unions on Galveston’s Waterfront, 1865-1925 by Clifford Farrington, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2003 Acknowledgments I would like to express my thanks to the following people: Alan Scattergood and the ACCESS faculty at Tresham College, Wellingborough; the American Studies staff and faculty at Sussex University, particularly Dr. Peter Way; and the American Studies staff and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. I would also like to thank the American Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin for a travel grant. My research benefitted from the help of librarians at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin and the special collections divisions of the following libraries: Tulane University; the Pullen Library, Georgia State University; the University of Texas at Arlington; and the Rosenberg Library, Galveston. Particular thanks go to: my supervisor, Mark Smith, for his constant encouragement and friendship; Jeanne Peterson for her support and understanding; and Barbara Griggs for her financial support. Lastly, thanks to my parents for their support, both financial and in so many other ways. iv Biracial Unions on Galveston’s Waterfront, 1865-1925 Publication No_________ Clifford Farrington, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2003 Supervisor: Mark C. Smith In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a tradition of biracial unionism sprang up among waterfront workers in Gulf Coast including Galveston. According to historian Eric Arnesen’s study of New Orleans, the racial practices of these southern longshoremen were distinct from those of other trade unionists and “violated some of the central tenets of the age of segregation.” Biracial unionism was an imperfect but significant strategy that broke racial barriers and revealed much about how both black and white workers balanced their class and racial identities. However, neither class nor race are, by themselves, sufficient categories for analysis. v Rather, it is through understanding the connections between economic and racial issues that we can reach a fuller knowledge of why any particular component of these identities operated at any one time. Thus we must study the intersection of class and race a period of time, and across a range of social, political and economic developments. While economic self interest was always at the forefront of white workers’ motivation, a range of factors shaped the particular course followed in each port. The character of employment relations, the power of employers, the prior history of racial division or segmentation of labor, the strength of black unions themselves, and the culture of longshoremen both black and white all played a part. No one has covered the early history of Galveston’s waterfront from the broad perspective given by Arnesen yet some of Texas’ earliest and strongest labor organizations began on Galveston’s waterfront. These organizations provide a study in how a particular laboring community dealt with the transition from benevolent societies to job-conscious unions; the role of the broader labor movement such as the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor and International Longshoremen’s Association; new technology and the struggle for workers control; and the open shop movement. This history provides a study of black and white worker’s consciousness and how the conflicts between race and class were worked out in practice, adding to our knowledge of race and the labor movement, the course of biracial unionism in the South, and Texas labor history. vi Contents Introduction. “A significant strategy.” 1 Chapter One. “No persons of Color:” The Screwmen’s Benevolent Association and the white labor monopoly. 19 Chapter Two. “The colored men along the shore:” The Cotton Jammers and Longshoremen’s Association and the challenge from black labor. 57 Chapter Three. “For our mutual benefit and protection:” The emergence of a biracial class consciousness. 86 Chapter Four. “Amalgamation regardless of color or race:” The New Orleans Plan. 127 Chapter Five. “The benefits of organization have been lost sight of.” The decline of union power. 170 Conclusion. “A standing they could not otherwise have attained.” 213 Bibliography. 224 Vita. 234 vii INTRODUCTION “A significant strategy.” Here was a remnant of haunted beauty—gray, shrouded, crumbling . of what did the city remind me? Miss Haversham of course. That was it. Miss Haversham the spectral bride in Great Expectations. Edna Ferber, A Kind of Magic. 1940 Although an air of ossified Dickensian glory haunts Galveston to this day, Edna Ferber’s image of Galveston belies the time when the city was the most important commercial center in Texas and one of the nation’s leading seaports. At the end of the Civil War, city boosters declared their expectation of turning Galveston into “the seaport of the Great Southwest.” Their vision of a Galveston era flourished over the next several decades as railroads advanced the frontier of commercial agriculture, particularly cotton, across the Southwest. Cotton shipments rose steadily and The Strand, Galveston’s commercial center, became known as the “Wall Street of the Southwest.” The port, the docks and wharves at the core of Galveston’s rise, earned the title of the “Queen of the Gulf.” Ornate mansions and sturdy mercantile buildings arose as the symbols of burgeoning prosperity. By 1900, a large percentage of the Texas cotton crop as well as wheat and other produce from as far away as California and Colorado left Galveston for destinations around the world. For the next quarter of a century, Galveston reigned as the nation’s leading cotton shipping port. Many factors contributed to Galveston’s commercial success. The port’s location; the vision and commercial acumen of local businessmen; investment by northern capital and the federal government; expanding railroad networks; the production and demand for cotton all played their part. The literal driving force, however, was provided by the waterfront workers: the men who loaded the three million-plus bales of cotton exported a year and unloaded incoming agricultural and 1 commercial goods. Galveston’s waterfront provided a lively scene in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, particularly during the cotton season from September to March. Sailing vessels and steamships lined docks along the island’s sheltered western shore where wharves were piled high with thousands of bales of cotton. Teams of freight handlers, cotton pressmen, yardmen, weighers, checkers and draymen moved the cotton from freight cars to ship side where cotton screwmen took the bales on board to stow: In one slip six mighty ocean liners with a total capacity of nearly one hundred thousand bales of cotton are clustered. The sound of the great steam hoist dragging the great bales aboard, the heave of the “cotton-jammer” as he screws the packages into the smallest space possible in the vessel’s hold, the rattle of the hand truck as the “gobbler” comes rolling the bales to the slings, the rumble of the drays bringing loads of oil-cake, flour and other cargo from car to ship side.1 The puffing of locomotives and the crashing of railway cars as they switched from pier to pier added to the general clamor and the industry of the hundreds of dockside laborers. These men, their muscle, sinew, sweat and sometimes blood, propelled the Galveston era yet their labors have not received the attention they deserve. Histories of Galveston have tended to focus on the city’s commercial success, its great mercantile families and their architectural legacy, the Great Storm of 1900, or the city’s high tolerance for illegal gambling, liquor and other vices.2 Some recent works have included the social history of the island but even these give scant attention to the waterfront or the men who toiled there. Yet the history of these men provides an important chapter in the underdeveloped field of Texas labor history in a place that was very different from other Texas cities, and even other ports such as Houston, Beaumont and Texas City. Some of the state’s earliest and strongest labor organizations began on Galveston’s waterfront as, uncoincidentaly, did the state 1 Galveston Tribune, in Bixel and Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm, 76. 2 For example: McComb, Galveston; Hyman, Oleander Odyssey; Bixel and Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm; Payne and Leavenworth, Historic Galveston. 2 government’s policy of staunch antiunionism. These waterfront organizations provide a study in how a particular laboring community in an industry with its own contours and intricacies dealt with such issues as the transition from benevolent societies to job-conscious unions; the role of the broader labor movement such as the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor and International Longshoremen’s Association; new technology and the struggle for workers’ control; and the open shop movement. Historians have paid attention to certain aspects, a particular organization or individual strike, but no one has written from a broad perspective and across a substantial time period. Moreover, no one has paid full attention to one of the central topics in labor history, the interaction between black and white workers and the intersection of race and class. Steam winches and locomotives aside, mechanization had little effect on the waterfront until containerized cargoes drastically reduced the labor force in the latter part of the twentieth century.