Litigating longshoremen in the Lone Star State: black dock workers and the struggle to maintain autonomy after the 1964 Civil Rights Act

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Abstract On 20 January 1969, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against 37 International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) locals in 10 Texas cities. The DOJ charged that the ILA was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In United States v International Longshoremen’s Association, the government attacked the segregated union structure found throughout the state’s waterfronts and condemned a long history of racial bias. In Texas, black dock workers made up two-thirds of ILA membership, but got fewer than half of the total work assignments. Black longshoremen both leaned on the law and defied it. For almost two decades, they refused to merge with white locals, but filed federal complaints to gain fair employment. This article argues that the struggle to maintain separatism while advocating for equality at ILA waterfronts was an effort to gain an unattainable workplace freedom by insisting on upholding a century-long tradition of biracial cooperation that was at the root of economic injustice, but at the cornerstone of an indispensable moral value and black sustainability.