Working-Class History: Multi-racial Unity Shut World’s Largest Shipbuilder

In July 1967, one of the most stirring struggles of multi-racial working-class unity occurred when 15,000 black and white workers struck the Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding Co., the world’s largest shipbuilder. The walkout was initiated by mostly black workers in the transportation department and followed by virtually all the company’s black and white workers. It eventually turned into a full-scale rebellion — similar to the big-city black rebellions that were sweeping the U.S. — against the loan companies and pawn shops surrounding the shipyard, sleazy merchants who had been bleeding the workers dry for years.

The workers had never struck before and were striking “against the national interest,” given the huge Navy contracts in the middle of the Vietnam War. It occured in a state with a 350-year history of racism, going back to the first arrival of black slaves in 1609.

They faced a pro-company press, the mayor, local police, Governor, State troopers, a company union and a judge’s Taft-Hartley injunction. Yet the workers, depending on their own rank-and-file leadership, organized a wildcat strike that shut the state’s largest corporation tight.

Black Workers Lead a
Wildcat Walkout

It began when three workers in the transportation department, two black and one white, refused overtime as a protest to press demands over grievances and unequal pay and were suspended. After a meeting of 239 mostly black workers in that department, 75 on the night shift walked out and set up a virtually all-black picket line. Although the department represented only 1% of the entire work-force, they were the main artery that kept the yard running.

The black and white workers on the incoming day shifts respected the picket line and the yard ground to a halt. The engineers on the Chesapeake & Ohio R.R. refused to move trains into the yard and the teamsters refused to drive their trucks past the wildcat picket line.

Virtually the entire yard’s workers soon met and voted 4 to 1 to walk out. They defied the court injunction ordering them back. Mass picketing stopped any scabs from entering. When a cop’s police car rammed the pickets, injuring two workers, the strikers launched a hail of rocks, bottles and bricks and soon the cops were huddling against a fence.

Open Rebellion: ‘They attacked us like they were brothers…’

Then open rebellion ensued. Multi-racial groups of workers smashed the pawn shops and loan companies that had been bleeding then dry for years. Soon the city’s entire 150-man police force with police dogs arrived and were met with a barrage of rocks and bottles. Then 3,500 strikers squared off against the cops charging with guns drawn and drove them back. One police official said the rebellion was “thoroughly integrated. [They] attacked us like they were brothers.”

Nine cops were hospitalized and five police cars burnt or damaged. The state troopers were ordered out onto the battlefield and sent dozens of bloodied workers to the hospital, but the yard was still crippled.

Finally the Governor ordered out more troopers to escort scabs into the yard, wading into the pickets in brutal fashion. With no real organized leadership, increasingly violent threats from the Governor and intervention of federal mediators, the workers were forced back with only the “promise” that their grievances “would be dealt with.”

But it was a historic lesson in multi-racial working-class struggle. As one worker declared, “Workers have gotta learn that they have to stand up or they’re dead…”