Waterfront Workers of New Orleans

This is an account of the New Orleans dockworkers and their formation of an inter-racial labour movement from 1880 to 1894, and again from 1901 to 1923. After the Civil War, Louisiana had no social group that exercised a clear and sustained cultural and political hegemony over the others, and sharp conflicts over racial and class issues marked the struggle for political control. This was particularly acute in New Orleans, which had what was in effect a long-standing black middle class. These free people of colour, along with ex-slaves under their guidance, fostered legislation that dismantled the segregated streetcar system and opened schools and jobs to blacks. For the dockworkers, however, solidarity came not only from other blacks, but from white co-workers as well, as they formed trade unions and eventually brought together a single union federation. This volume describes how the newly-formed Dock and Cotton Council successfully resisted efforts by employers to separate black and white unions, diminish workers' control over jobs, and restructure the organization of labour on the waterfront.