Oral historian Sandy Polishuk found a unique subject when she began her project with the little old lady who seemed to be involved with so many significant events in Northwest labor history. Author Elinor Langer remarks, "Sandy Polishuk's Sticking to the Union is the best kind of oral history, bringing to life a person and a era quickly passing of out reach. A grassroots tour through twentieth-century ...history, it is supported by extensive research amplifying and at times challenging Julia Ruuttila's own reflections. The interplay between the voices of the older subject and the younger author is one of the most satisfying features of the book."
Ms. Polishuk provides her framework in italics as introductions to chapters and bridges between memory and other fact. Julia's voice is presented in plain text.
Chapter 11
In 1948, Julia was on her own - her son Mike was grown and
gone and she was'nt married- and her prospects for a new job
didn't seem good after her very public political firing. Fortunately, she still had her typewriter, her writing skills, and friends in the labor movement. The ILWU was involved in a bitter strike over control of their hiring halls. The employers association was refusing to negotiate because ILWU president Harry Bridges would not sign a non-Communist affidavit. It turned out to be good timing for Julia. She was drawn into their struggle and the union and stayed on for nearly 40 years.[i]
The ILWU was born in 1937 when the Pacific Coast District of the International
Longshoremen's Association, under the leadership of Harry Bridges, voted
to affiliate with the CIO. From the beginning the ILWU was committed to
internal democracy and took active stands for peace and justice. Because its
constitution prohibited discrimination based on political beliefs, Communists
held key positions.
There was no chance of getting work, as my firing and hearing was in the newspapers on the front page. The 1948 Longshore strike broke out and they had a big soup kitchen. Some of the ILWU officials called me up and told me to come down there
and work on the publicity committee. They said I could eat in the soup kitchen
and the cooks from the Marine Cooks and Stewards (it was a joint maritime
strike; the other maritime unions were involved in it also, the offshore
unions) would make me up food to take home.
My
end of the publicity was to get pictures into other labor papers, like the
different maritime union papers, Voice of the Federation, and the International
Woodworker, the
Woodworkers' paper. We had a longshoreman who had worked as a photographer
and I used to go on the picket line with him. He'd take these pictures
and I'd write up the captions to go with them.
When
the strike was over, the Longshoremen came and told me I had better come to
work for them, for their paper, the Dispatcher, and to be secretary to Matt Meehan,
who was the international representative in that area. I went to work for the
Longshoremen and continued to work for them until I was almost eighty.
When
I got fired from Public Welfare I made up my mind I was never going to work
eight hours again as long as I lived because there were other more important
things to do. When I went to work for Matt Meehan, I worked half time. I
thought, I'll just work and see if it interests me. 'Course,
sometimes I think I put in more than eight hours a day on the Dispatcher, but at least it's work that
interests me. The best thing that ever happened to me was my getting fired.
A
great many of the old-time longshoremen came out of the IWW. Matt Meehan did,
too. He had belonged to the Seamen's Division of the IWW. And for that
matter, so did Harry Bridges. There wasn't much the conservatives in the
local could do about Matt because he was appointed by Bridges. And when I was
his secretary there was no way they could get at me. Anyway he was so smart and
so good on the floor and he had a lot of support among the rank and file. The
phonies were not nearly as smart and they couldn't maneuver as well. He
was one of the smartest people I've ever met and he had only gone through
the eighth grade.
As
Meehan's secretary, Julia could be open about her political beliefs and
activities. And she respected her boss.
Matt
Meehan was one of the original organizers of the ILWU and its first
secretary-treasurer. It was Matt who suggested the Longshoremen adopt the motto
"An injury to one is an injury to all.” In 1948, when he hired
Julia, he had just become a full-time ILWU union representative.[ii]
Though
they were in the ILWU, Hawaiian longshoremen were paid 32 cents an hour less
than their counterparts on the West Coast. In 1949, they went out on strike for
parity. During the strike, a ship loaded with Hawaiian pineapple was turned
away from Seattle and Tacoma when longshoremen there called it "hot
cargo" and refused to unload it. The ship then came to the Columbia River
port town of The Dalles, where there was no ILWU local, but Local 8 got wind of
it and put up a picket to prevent unloading. The ensuing ruckus became known as
The Dalles Pineapple Beef.[iii]
Frank
Pozzi, the Portland ILWU's lawyer, referred to the Pineapple Beef as an
alleged riot that wasn't supposed to happen. He said the Longshore
pickets had been lectured in Portland before they left: no trouble, no
violence. But they couldn't control themselves.[iv]
When
I worked for Matt there were lots of funny incidents always happening. During
the 1949 Longshore strike in the Hawaiian Islands, a barge of scab pineapples
was sent across the Pacific and sneaked up the Columbia River in the fog to The
Dalles. It was gonna be loaded on trucks and sent down to California to some
factory where they made fruit cocktail.
Matt
sent a bunch of longshoremen up to The Dalles to picket. He went up and
established a headquarters in a hotel at The Dalles. He warned the Longshore
pickets that went up there that there was something very funny going on in
town, because there were reporters and writers there from all over the United
States. He said he was sure that the employers were going to foment some kind
of trouble and he urged them to be cool and cautious.
This
scab truck charged through the picket lines and almost killed a couple of
longshoremen, they jumped out of the way just in time. Somebody said–and
that was one of the provocateurs, as we called them–somebody yelled,
"Let's get them fellows!” and they charged down. A couple of
hundred men charged down after this scab truck and turned it over and took the
driver out–I think there were two men in the front seat–took them
out and started to beat them up. One of them was about to be killed and would
have been if it hadn't been for Toby Christiansen, business agent at
Local 8. He knocked the guy out that had this truck driver down. He told me all
about it. He said this guy said, "Toby, you're hitting the wrong
man, this is me.”
That
incident gave rise to what they called The Dalles Pineapple Beef, because the
Longshoremen were sued by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company for a huge sum of
money, I forget how much, an enormous sum of money.
Matt
called me up and he said to get hold of Francis Murnane and for us to write up
a leaflet about what The Dalles Pineapple Beef was really all about and what
the 1949 Longshore strike in Hawaii was. We were to take it down and run it off
on the mimeograph machine in the Local 8 office, and we were to get someone
with a car–Murnane never did have a car because he always gave all his
money away–and we were to take it up to The Dalles so Matt could have the
pickets up there distribute that leaflet to everybody.
So
at the crack of dawn I went down to the Longshore hall and there was a White
Finn (that's a right‑wing Finn; there were the Red Finns and the
White Finns) who was the secretary of the local at that time named Mackie. He
wouldn't let me go back in the room where the mimeograph machine was.
Now
Mackie was an ex‑boxer and he was a very powerful guy, but I was so angry
and I was determined to get this leaflet run off so it could be picked up and
get it to The Dalles.
I
said, "Get out of my way, Mackie,” and without thinking how idiotic
it was, I rammed him in the stomach and he slipped on something and fell back
into this big wastepaper basket. He had quite a rump on him and he stuck in
there and he couldn't get out of it.
I
rushed back in the room where the mimeograph machine was and while I was
starting to run off this stencil I heard these longshoremen who'd come in
to pay their dues laughing their heads off. They said, "How'd you
get in that contraption, Mackie?”
He
was cursing like anything. Then I heard him say, "That little so-and-so
knocked me down,” and then how they laughed!
Well,
I never stopped to think, I just rammed him in the stomach without thinking. If
you stopped and thought too much you never did it, you could always figure out
reasons why you shouldn't.
Here's
something else funny. Pretty soon here comes Murnane. He had had a couple of
hours sleep, I hadn't had any, and he'd also had some tea–he
was a tea drinker, being an Irishman–and he had located someone to drive
us to The Dalles. So we loaded the leaflets in this guy's car and started
for The Dalles.
We
got partway up there and this guy says, "Open the glove compartment and
see what I've got in there.” He had a stash full of pistols.
Murnane made him drive up a side road and bury this stuff under a log in some
little wooded area. We couldn't have that with us in The Dalles. This guy
meant well, but that was the worst thing he could have done. We met Matt at the
hotel and he had lined up all these pickets to go out and distribute the
leaflets.
I
was up there another time for something in connection with The Dalles Pineapple
Beef, and Matt said the National Guard was all over the docks and he told me to
go down there and try to find out what's going on, because, after all, I
had a press card.
When
I got down there they had all their bayonets on their guns and they
wouldn't let me go through onto the dock area; they didn't pay any
attention to my press card. I saw this Oregonian reporter in there and I yelled to
him to come over and identify me as a reporter so I could get in and he
wouldn't do it. I got the best of him later–a year or so
later–I was at some sort of Longshore meeting here in Portland, and this
same reporter was trying to get into that and I said, "You can't
get in.”
He
said, "How did you get in?”
I
said, "On my press card, but your press card isn't any good
here.” And he couldn't get in.
Anyway,
the Oregonian or
Journal
photographer, I forget which–they were still all down there waiting for
something more to happen–took a picture of me standing, it was really
hysterical. You know that's one clipping I wish I'd kept. I believe
it was on the front page and it showed all these National Guardsmen with their
bayonets and their rifles all lined up. The photographer was a good one. It
must have struck him as very funny because I was even smaller then than I am
now, because I was very thin, and there I am against all those armed men.
They
threw the pineapple in the river. And that is not all that went in the river.
They threw the cameras of the photographers in because they were sympathetic to
the Pineapple people, the employers. But later they were sorry they did it and
they bought cameras for them, to replace them. Probably Matt told them to. One
of them turned out to be a great friend of ours in the Portland newspaper
strike and he used to laugh about it.
You
know how those things drag on. I was living in Astoria and married to Oscar by
the time it came to trial in federal court in Portland. I flew from Astoria to
Portland to cover that trial for the Dispatcher.
They
lost the court case but they never had to pay the fine, because they had me
come to Portland and do some research in Moody's Industrial on all the companies that were
involved with the pineapple company that had shipped that over. They had
slowdowns at all those companies. So finally the pineapple company called it
off. They wanted the slowdowns ended and the union didn't have to pay.
When they use the power properly, it's very strong and powerful.
On
June 8, 1956, the Supreme Court refused to hear the ILWU's appeal of the
judgment against Local 8 awarding the Hawaiian Pineapple Company $278,000. A
month later, on July 6, 1956, during Longshore Hawaii negotiations, the parties
announced they had reached a settlement for $100,000. If there was a slowdown
it was not reported in the newspaper accounts.[v]
The
United States had tried to legally oust ILWU president Harry Bridges for years
(there were also conservative elements in Local 8, the Portland local, who
opposed him). The first warrant for Bridges' arrest and deportation to
his native Australia, on the grounds that he was a Communist, was served March
5, 1938. Bridges won dismissal on December 30, 1939. He was rearrested in
February 1941 after the Alien Registration Act (commonly called the Smith Act)
was enacted in June 1940, but again won dismissal, this time by the Supreme
Court, on June 18, 1945. Three months later he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen,
only to be indicted in May 1949 for perjury for denying he was a Communist at
his citizenship proceedings. He was found guilty, along with the two men who
testified on his behalf, in April 1950.
Two
months later the Korean War began. The officers of the San Francisco ILWU local
introduced a resolution at a union meeting endorsing President Truman's
decision to send troops to Korea and pledging that shipping would not be
disrupted for the duration of the war. Bridges, who was out on bail, introduced
an amendment stating that the union should support the United Nations'
order for a cease-fire and negotiations.
The
local did not adopt Bridges' amendment, but the public outcry over his
stand resulted in his bail being revoked. In August 1950, he spent nearly three
weeks in jail before bail was reinstated. The Supreme Court reversed his
perjury conviction on June 15, 1953, and in June 1955 Bridges won the civil
suit to rescind his naturalization and kept his U.S. citizenship.[vi]
Another
funny thing was the time that Bridges was in jail during the Korean War which
he opposed. There was a Coastwise Caucus meeting in North Bend in the Longshore
hall. I went down there to cover the meeting. The right-wing elements on the
waterfront thought this was a good time to get rid of Bridges. The Portland
local was an anti-Bridges local. The leader of the right wing was this Finn,
Mackie. He was down there and they had determined that they were going to pass
a motion at the caucus to get rid of Bridges. They had notified the reporters
and people and they were all outside trying to get in to see what's going
on, but, of course, they didn't let them in because it was a closed
meeting. Some of them had gotten a ladder and had scrambled up so they could
peek through a transom.
A
friend of mine that belonged to the local that they had at Rainier, he said to
me, "You'll have to go out on the street too, with the other
reporters, you can't be in here.” He thought I was the reporter for
the People's World.
Just
then Matt came in. "What's this commotion all about?” he said
to this guy.
He
said, "Well, she can't be in here.”
Matt
said, "Oh yes, she can. She's my secretary. Now you shut up, you
so-and-so.” That guy was very embarrassed.
Oh,
it was a very heated meeting, because a resolution was introduced against Harry
Bridges. What kept that motion from passing was a speech that Matt made. It was
one of the best speeches I ever heard in support of Bridges. He talked about
the Centralia case, about the stuff that labor had gone through in its efforts
to organize and that Bridges had followed because he started out in life as an
IWW on the ships. It was a very moving speech in the kind of language that
longshoremen understand. A lot of other people made speeches too and the motion
was shouted down, absolutely shouted down. It was delightful. They ended up by
sending a telegram of greeting and support to Bridges. Everyone in that hall
except three people signed it.
The
reporters were just simply flabbergasted and furious. Their trip was for
nothing and I was trying to explain it to one of them. I said, "You know,
their motto is 'an injury to one is an injury to all,' and for
once, they used it.”
Matt's
parents were Irish immigrants and he had quite a brogue, and the Immigration
and Naturalization Service thought that he was a foreign-born Irishman. Matt
and Bridges fell out once over something and Immigration and Naturalization
kept track of all the stuff like that, so they thought, here's their
opportunity to get Matt to testify against Bridges.
So
they went to his house one evening, rang the doorbell, the Immigration. They
said they had some very private business to discuss with him and they
approached him on the subject of Bridges. Then he said, "No.” He
wouldn't cooperate. He disagreed with Bridges, but he wouldn't
cooperate because Bridges was a first-class union man and a member of his union
and so he wouldn't help them.
So
they said, "Well, promise us that you won't tell Bridges that we
talked to you.”
He
said, "I give you my solemn word, I won't tell Harry until I can
get to the telephone in the kitchen.” I'll never forget Matt saying
that.
What
they had disagreed about was over World War II. Bridges took an extremely
patriotic stand and felt that there shouldn't be any labor disputes while
the war was going on, but Matt felt that there were some labor disputes that
couldn't be put on ice. I think Matt was right, but they had a valid
disagreement. One of the few times that I disagreed with Bridges.
We
disagreed about the draft during Vietnam. And also over the Ray Becker case.
I've never understood why he did everything possible to keep that from
being brought before the longshore union. He was annoyed at everyone that was
involved in it. I've often tried to figure that out and the only thing
that I can think of is that Bridges was still in great danger of being
deported. I think he thought it detracted attention away from the efforts to
defend him, or maybe he thought that it was prejudicial to his case. Ray Becker
didn't represent a major up-to-date struggle on the labor front, which
Bridges' case did. [Ray Becker was released a year and a half after the
attempts to deport Bridges began.]
Sometimes
there's a conflict between the needs of the whole and what an individual
needs. I didn't used to have enough intellectual muscle to grasp that,
but I can grasp it now; though I'm sure I would never have changed my
position on any of these matters. But I can see now how some people I was very
annoyed with at the time, why they took a different position.
Congress
adopted the Smith Act in 1940, making it a crime to teach, advocate, or
encourage the overthrow of the U.S. government or to organize or be a member of
any group or society devoted to such advocacy. The first to be tried under the
act were members of the Socialist Workers Party in Minnesota in 1943. A trial
in New York of the top leadership of the Communist Party followed in 1949.
After their conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1951, other Communist
leaders were also arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Julia got involved when the
trial touched the ILWU.
When
the top hierarchy in the Communist Party was on trial in New York, one of the
voluntary attorneys was the Longshore attorney from San Francisco [Richard
Gladstein]. The judge sentenced all of those attorneys to jail for contempt of
court on some trumped-up charge.[vii]
You
couldn't very well call up people and say, "What do you think of
the Smith Act trial?” because people were so petrified over the Smith Act
trials they couldn't think straight, so I started calling up ministers
and asking them what they thought about the conviction of attorneys defending the
damned. One minister, who said he thought that every person, irregardless of
who they were, had a right to be defended in court, volunteered to write a
statement. It was very good. In fact, it was excellent. I got three other of
the top-line ministers to sign it.
The
minister of the First Unitarian Church wouldn't sign it, Dr. [Richard M.]
Steiner. Well, my mother was quite active in that church, so I was stunned,
absolutely stunned. In fact, we got into quite an argument and he hung up on
me. The head of the Congregational Church and First Christian and Presbyterian
Church did sign it. But Dr. Steiner wouldn't.
I
got to thinking what I could do next, so I started calling up other people and
I called up the man, I can't think of his name, but he was the board
chairman at the First National Bank. I read this statement to him and he
endorsed it.
He
was the leading layperson at the Unitarian church and a heavy contributor, so
then I got my mother to get Dr. Steiner on the phone 'cause I
didn't think he'd speak to me. Then she gave me the phone and I
said, "Maybe you'd be interested to know what so-and-so
said.” He hung up on me again.
I
wrote some stories for the People's World and for the Federated Press and I
sent a copy of the letter with the signatures. I sent a copy of it to the ILWU
attorney who had been thrown in the clink.
During
the many years Julia was associated with the ILWU, she was loyal but not
uncritical. She was particularly troubled by racial discrimination within Local
8.
There
are three classifications of workers on the waterfront: Class A longshoremen
are fully registered and are the only workers eligible to be members of the
union. Class B longshoremen are partially registered and are called to work
after all the class A men have been placed. Their position is somewhat
analogous to an apprentice. Casuals, or "white cards,” have no
official standing. Technically a "white card” is issued to any man
asking for one on a day when there are no available A or B men when more
workers are needed.
During
World War II there was plenty of work on the waterfront and many casuals were
hired, including blacks, but when it came time to register the blacks, the vast
majority of Local 8 members objected. Still, there was a minority of Portland
longshoremen determined to integrate the local who tried to recruit volunteers
and worked with the NAACP and the Urban League to that end.
The
Urban League had recruited two men in November 1961. In December, after the
league negotiated with the union, the men got their "white cards”
allowing them to work as casuals. The league publicized the victory in its
newsletter and urged other men to show up at the hiring hall.[viii]
But
when it came time for advancement into B status the door was still closed.
I
remember going in the office of Local 8 one day in 1943 to pick up some
pictures. The Dispatchers had just been delivered to the Longshore hall, so, as I came up to the
dues window, papers were all lying on the counter. This dreadful walking boss
[longshore gang foreman] said to the secretary, "Don't give her any
news whatever. She's a so-and-so and such-and-such,” and he slapped
me in the face as hard as he could with this folded-up paper. It really hurt.
He said, "Look what you so-and-so's have done now. You nigger lovers,”
and a few other epithets.[ix]
I
found out afterwards the paper had a picture of Paul Robeson on the front page.
He had been made an honorary member of Local 10 in San Francisco, which has
always had blacks, and they've got, I think, sixty percent black
membership today.[x]
I
had learned, when I got so badly beaten up in the Woodworkers' strike in
'35, that it's pretty stupid to fight with someone that's two
or three times your size, but I lost my temper completely and I decided to hit
him where it would hurt the most. I drew up my foot. I was going to kick him in
the balls. That's when the secretary of the local came out from behind
the dues window and took me by the arm and pulled me into his office. He said,
"Now you see what I have to put up with all the time.”
Once
I asked Matt Meehan why there were no blacks in the Portland local when there
were so many in San Francisco and some in Seattle and all the other ports. He
said during the '34 strike that the shipowners imported blacks to San
Francisco to scab on the docks and when they found out the score they went over
to the strikers. And after it was over they were taken into the union. But they
didn't have to do that in Portland, there were so many scabby whites
willing to scab.
[xi]In
the ILWU, if someone traveled from one port to another, take for instance if
someone had relatives that were ill or in the hospital or some reason they
wanted to go there and work, the port that took that man in they also had the
right to travel someone back. So the first time that Portland wanted to travel
someone to San Francisco, Bridges said, okay, and then he traveled a black up
to Portland to work. He did it on purpose. But the longshoremen in Local 8
threw that black man into the Willamette River. He went back to San Francisco.
He couldn't stay here.
Things
got so bad that Lou Goldblatt, secretary-treasurer of the international union,
came to Portland. He was Jewish and he was really a great guy, one of the best
people the union had. That was a time [1964] when work was booming on the
waterfront and they were going to take in four hundred new B men, and Harry
Bridges had said that every one of the four hundred should be black to make up
for the years of discrimination. Lou Goldblatt came to Portland and he said, "Things
can't go on like this,” and he said, "There's got to be
a compromise. You've got to take in forty blacks.”[xii]
Francis
Murnane was the hero of the waterfront. He was able to get up before a meeting
and make everything sound like something that you'd want to do even in
that right-wing local. He is the one that told them, "We can't get
away with what we've been doing for years anymore. We've absolutely
got to take in blacks,” and there were enough decent people in the local
so the compromise was accepted.
When
they finally did take those forty B men in, it was still difficult for the
blacks because there was a ruling on the waterfront if you were in a
fight–you know it's so dangerous working on the
waterfront–that the people in the fight would both be fired; but it
worked out, in those early days, the only ones that got fired were the blacks.
So some of the real racists down there would provoke fights and they got rid of
a great many of them.
In
February 1964, 46 of 299 new B men registered in Portland were black. The Coast
Labor Relations Committee (CLRC) approved the addition of more B men to the
Portland list, but, in 1967, the minutes reported that "Local 8 is still
resisting the addition of 100 new Class B longshoremen in Portland as agreed to
by this Committee.” This was because there would have to be blacks among
the new B men.[xiii]
The
CLRC retaliated by refusing to advance B men to A. Local 8 responded by
dispatching B men as if they were A, a practice declared in violation of the
coast agreement. In May of 1968, the coast committee ordered Portland to cease
and desist such dispatching and to select at least 50 blacks for the new B
list. The Portland employers agreed to follow the coast directives, but the
local continued to resist.[xiv]
Finally
in August an agreement was reached, but while it did proclaim that
approximately one-half of the new B men beyond the present 247 would come from
minority and underprivileged groups, it went on to state that only a minimum of
eight were required to be Negroes.[xv]
Earlier
in 1968, some of the blacks had filed a complaint against Local 8 and the
Pacific Maritime Association, the employers, with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They alleged
that the joint committee intentionally engaged in unlawful practices.
In
June 1968, the EEOC "found that reasonable cause existed to believe
defendants . . . were in violation of Title VII,” the section making
discrimination in employment illegal. In late October, when conciliation efforts
to achieve voluntary compliance proved unsuccessful, 23 black longshoremen,
along with two men denied white cards, filed suit in U.S. District Court. By
this time the August agreement was in effect and at least ten black B men had
been advanced to A status; however, nine of the plaintiffs in the suit were new
A men who had been refused union membership. The suit also cited a point system
for promotion instituted after the black B men were registered in 1964 that was
used to discriminate against blacks.[xvi]
In
early December, representatives of all the parties met in Judge Gus
Solomon's chambers to work out a settlement. The consent agreement
provided that the approximately 65 men with complaints would have their status
reviewed immediately and their places fixed, that 12 men would be advanced to A
each month until the B list was exhausted, and that by August they would be
proposed for membership.[xvii]
When
Julia's grandson Shane went to work on the waterfront, he found it very
difficult to tolerate the way some white workers tried to pick fights with
black workers. He said, "Anytime a black would run the winch, the white
guys down in the hole would yell at him and say he was doing a bad job, even if
he was a much better winch driver than a white guy that had been on
previously.”[xviii]
In
1984, Julia acknowledged, "There still is discrimination and racism on
the Portland waterfront but nothing like it was.” And again, despite the
continued racial tension on the waterfront, in 1991, Julia reflected,
"Today I think it's better, quite a bit better. There are women on
the waterfront now too. Things have greatly changed since I went to work first
for Matt Meehan.”
Endnotes:
[i] Larrowe, Harry Bridges, pp. 293-99.
[ii] Hardy, pp. 179-180.
[iii] After nearly five months, the union settled for an immediate 14-cent raise with another 7 cents in five months. NYT,
[iv] Frank Pozzi, interview, tape recording, Portland,
Oregon, 26 December 1990, JR.
[v] Dispatcher,3 August 1951, p. 1; 8 June 1956, p. 1; 6 July 1956, pp. 1, 3; NYT, 4 July 1956, p. 36; ILWU v. Hawaiian Pineapple Co. Ltd., Hawaiian Pineapple Co. Ltd. v. Martin E. Aden et al. 226 F. 2d 875, 1955 <web.lexis-nexis.com> (23
November 2002).
[vi] Larrowe, pp. 327-331.
[vii] Gladstein was prevented from defending Bridges in his 1949-50 perjury trial because he was serving a six-month sentence for contempt of court when Bridges’ trial began in November 1949. NYT,15 Oct 1949, pp 1, 3.
[viii] Urban League of Portland, “News Roundup,” p. 6.
[ix] Julia remembered, “A few years later, the
Longshoremen were picketing some scab operation that they were trying to shut
down, and I was over there writing that up and he was there, and he was taking
a good position, so we spoke to each other.”
[x] The front-page story in the Dispatcher on November 19, 1943, was the awarding of honorary
lifetime memberships in the ILWU to actor-singer Paul Robeson and artist
Rockwell Kent at a luncheon in their honor on 12 November 1943.
[xi] For a discussion of the history of black membership
in ILWU locals, see Nelson, Divided We Stand, chap. 3, especially pp. 94-101.
[xii] Although the international leadership was committed
to racial equality, it was difficult to impose it because the union also
embraced local autonomy and rank-and-file democracy. Ibid., pp. 93, 99-100.
[xiii] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, meeting no. 3, 31
January 1967, ILWU:P.
[xiv] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, 7 May 1968, ILWU:P.
[xv] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, meeting no. 12, 15
August 1968, ILWU:P.
[xvi] Minutes of Special Meeting of the Portland Joint
Longshore Labor Relations Committee for Registration, no. 41, 20 August 1968,
no. 45, ILWU:P; Complaint for Injunctive and Affirmative Relief and Damages
under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States District
Court for the District of Oregon, civil no. 68-608, filed 29 October 1968,
facsimile, JR.
[xvii] Linell Hill, et al, v. Local 8, ILWU, et al, civil no. 68-608, 6 December 1968, transcript of proceedings, pp. 3-4, facsimile, JR.
[xviii] Shane Ruuttila, interview by author, tape recording,
Anchorage, Alaska, 20 February 1991, JR.
Copyright© 2003 by Sandy Polishuk
Published in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillian, New York, N.Y. and Hampshire, England
Sandy Polishuk has been an activist since the 1960s in the peace, justice, and women's liberation movements. Polishuk recently viewed her 1974 police intelligence file that listed her occupation as "parent and revolutionary." She serves as vice president of her local teacher's union, the American Federation of Teachers at Portland State University, and as treasurer of the Oregon local of the National Writers Union. Her essays have appeared in both scholarly and literary journals. She teaches oral history at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon.
