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Ferdinand Smith
Ferdinand Smith (5 May 1893 – 14 August 1961) was a Jamaican-born Communist labor activist. A prominent activist in the United States and the West Indies, Smith co-founded the National Maritime Union with Joseph Curran and M. Hedley Stone. By 1948 he was wanted by the U.S. Immigration Service for deportation, and is remembered as one of the most powerful black labor leaders in U.S. history. Background Ferdinand Christopher Smith was born on May 5, 1893, in Savanna-la-Mar in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica. His father was a teacher. Career Early years Smith was first a laborer (porter), then waiter in a local hotel. He left to live in Panama, where he worked as hotel steward and salesman: he first experienced Jim Crow conditions. At the end of World War I, he left to live in Cuba as a migrant laborer. He left Cuba for Mobile, Alabama, as a sailor. He worked for two decades as a ship's steward. During the 1920s, he joined the Communist-created Marine Workers Industrial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinand Smith
Ferdinand Smith (5 May 1893 – 14 August 1961) was a Jamaican-born Communist labor activist. A prominent activist in the United States and the West Indies, Smith co-founded the National Maritime Union with Joseph Curran and M. Hedley Stone. By 1948 he was wanted by the U.S. Immigration Service for deportation, and is remembered as one of the most powerful black labor leaders in U.S. history. Background Ferdinand Christopher Smith was born on May 5, 1893, in Savanna-la-Mar in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica. His father was a teacher. Career Early years Smith was first a laborer (porter), then waiter in a local hotel. He left to live in Panama, where he worked as hotel steward and salesman: he first experienced Jim Crow conditions. At the end of World War I, he left to live in Cuba as a migrant laborer. He left Cuba for Mobile, Alabama, as a sailor. He worked for two decades as a ship's steward. During the 1920s, he joined the Communist-created Marine Workers Industrial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population within the city limits was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 195,111 at the 2010 United States census, 2010 census. It is the fourth-most-populous city in Alabama, after Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville, Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery. Alabama's only saltwater port, Mobile is located on the Mobile River at the head of Mobile Bay on the north-central Gulf Coast. The Port of Mobile has always played a key role in the economic health of the city, beginning with the settlement as an important trading center between the French colonization of the Americas, French colonists and Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans, down to its current role as the 12th-largest port in the United States.Drechsel, Emanuel. ''Mobilian Jargon: Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American Pidgin''. New York: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Negro Congress
The National Negro Congress (NNC) (1936–ca. 1946) was an American organization formed in 1936 at Howard University as a broadly based organization with the goal of fighting for Black liberation; it was the successor to the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, both affiliated with the Communist Party. During the Great Depression, the party worked in the United States to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice. This period represented the Party's peak of prestige in African-American communities. NNC was opposed to war, fascism, and discrimination, especially racial discrimination. During the Great Depression era, a majority of Americans faced immense economic problems. Many lost their jobs and as a result, were forced to live at the margins of society. The crisis highlighted inequities for many African Americans, who were unemployed at higher rates than white. Historically, many black workers were segregated and more often than not, racially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Workers Of The World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of their short-term goals, particularly in the American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries. At their peak in August 1917, IWW membership was estimated at more than 150,000, with active wings in the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia. The extremely high rate of IWW membership turnover during this era (estimated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Seamen's Union
The International Seamen's Union (ISU) was an American maritime trade union which operated from 1892 until 1937. In its last few years, the union effectively split into the National Maritime Union and Seafarer's International Union. The early years Originally formed as the National Union of Seamen of America in 1892 in Chicago, Illinois, the organization was a federation of independent unions, including the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, the Lake Seamen's Union, the Atlantic Coast Seamen's Union, and the Seamen's and Firemen's Union of the Gulf Coast. Formed by maritime labor representatives from America's Pacific, Great Lakes and Gulf Coast regions, in 1893, the ISU affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and took the name International Seamen's Union of America in 1895. The union existed at a turbulent time in the United States shipping industry. The unions within the ISU faced "continual changeover in the makeup and leadership," and weathered the historical periods o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marine Cooks And Stewards
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013. The union, which still uses hiring halls, has a single labor contract with the Pacific Maritime Association which covers all 29 seaports on the west coast of the US, from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego; its 15,000 dockworkers were paid an average of $171,000 in 2019. The union has been described as "the aristocrat of the working class" and their members "lords of the docks" for their high pay and power over a choke point of the global economy. 20th century history The ILWU retained San Francisco-based law firm of Gladstein, And ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Longshoremen's And Warehousemen's Union
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013. The union, which still uses hiring halls, has a single labor contract with the Pacific Maritime Association which covers all 29 seaports on the west coast of the US, from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego; its 15,000 dockworkers were paid an average of $171,000 in 2019. The union has been described as "the aristocrat of the working class" and their members "lords of the docks" for their high pay and power over a choke point of the global economy. 20th century history The ILWU retained San Francisco-based law firm of Gladstein, Anders ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Bridges
Harry Bridges (28 July 1901 – 30 March 1990) was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several chapters in forming a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), expanding members to workers in warehouses, and led it for the next 40 years. He was prosecuted for his labor organizing and designated as subversive by the U.S. government during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with the goal of deportation. This was never achieved. Bridges became a naturalized citizen in 1945. His conviction by a federal jury for having lied about his Communist Party membership when seeking naturalization was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1953 as having been prosecuted untimely, outside the statute of limitations. His official power was reduced when the ILWU was expelled by the CIO in 1950, but he continued to be re-elected by the California membership and was highly influential until his retirem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike
The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as a number of variations on these names) lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934 when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the San Francisco General Strike which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike. The result of the strike was the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike of 1934, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Indust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1936 Gulf Coast Maritime Workers' Strike
The 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike was a labor action of the splinter union "Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast" lasting from October 31, 1936 to January 21, 1937. The strike's main effects were felt in Houston and Galveston. The Gulf Coast strike was parallel to a similar West Coast maritime strike, called almost simultaneously. Both strikes were catalysts for the formation of the National Maritime Union under union leader Joseph Curran. Origins In Houston, New Orleans, and other major docks along the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast, strikes and other labor conflict had been a regular annual occurrence through the 1930s. In July 1934, three black longshoremen had been shot to death in a firefight on the Houston docks during a strike. In 1935, longshoremen along the entire coast had 1935 Gulf Coast longshoremen's strike, struck from October 1 through November 27 to little avail except for 14 more killings. Nationally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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