What if your job meant 10-hour days, seven days a week? What if the work was dangerous, exhausting, and barely enough to feed your family? And what if the company making millions from your labor paid you just enough to keep you quiet and tired? This is the story of Galveston's longshoremen. Following the lead of laborers around the country, they believed that by organizing together, they might finally be heard. From brutal summers on the docks to blood spilled on the wharves. So, five months of martial law under the watchful eye of the Texas National Guard. This is the forgotten chapter of labor history that still echoes here at the Port of Galveston and even in courtrooms in Texas today.
By the mid-19th century in the United States, as industrialization and free enterprise swept across the country, most companies operated with little oversight. While this often fueled innovation and boosted profits, it also led to unsafe, unhealthy, and downright inhumane working conditions for the laborers who kept those industries moving. By the 1850s, Galveston, a booming port city and one of the most important commercial hubs in the South, the stakes were especially high. Cotton was king, and Galveston was Texas's gateway to the world.
The docks at the Port of Galveston were always busy. The ships constantly loading and unloading cargo, but behind the economic engine were thousands of workers, many of them longshoremen and screwmen. Longshoreman is just a really old-timey word for a dock worker. They're called longshoremen because they work along the shore.
These jobs were to physically load and unload the cargo onto each vessel. A screw man is a specialized type of longshoreman, historically in ports like Galveston and New Orleans. This job was to pack cotton tightly into the holds of ships using long jack screws, a specialized tool to pack as much cotton as possible onto a vessel.
This was dangerous, grueling labor for low pay. Often in brutal conditions. These men powered the port. But they had little power of their own. All across the United States, those doing the actual labor began connecting with each other and organizing into labor unions. The men and women running the machines in factories or loading goods onto ships realized that one person's voice speaking out against these conditions might get lost.
But by speaking in unison, real change was possible. Through the power of collective bargaining, unions have historically fought for better pay, safer working conditions, and fair employment practices across a wide range of American industries. Galveston wasn't an outlier. It was part of a wave. Across the nation, laborers had already begun testing. The limits of free enterprise labor strikes had been happening, leading to the founding of the National Labor
Union in 1866. By the time Texas workers began organizing, they were stepping into a much larger story of labor, unrest, and reform.
According to the Texas State Historical Association, Galveston was home to the State's first union activity. The Carpenters' Local No.7 was organized on the island in 1860, followed by other local trades and shipping unions. And in a port city like Galveston, no group carried more weight than the screwmen. In 1866, they formed the screwmen's Benevolent Association. These men had the brutal task of compressing the cotton bales for shipment, as I mentioned earlier, and it cannot be overstated that in Texas, cotton was king. Cotton is light and compressible. And the more cotton that could be physically squeezed into the holds of these ships, the more profit you would make on the shipment for each shipment. A good crew of screwmen and longshoremen could make the difference between breaking, even making a marginal sum, or making a massive profit.
An early sign that organized labor on the docks of Galveston would be both powerful and indispensable. As the State's most important port, Galveston relied heavily on the labor of longshoremen as well. Also, in 1866, a group of white longshoremen organized their first union, with the island's black longshoremen forming their union in 1870.
Though segregated unions were a common practice in the South, it divided the labor force and made it harder for workers to coordinate their efforts, and the powerful people controlling the industries didn't have any problem exploiting the system.
On the Galveston wharves, black longshoremen worked for the Mallory Company. Though the competing Morgan company paid better, they only employed white longshoremen, but with everyone working in such close proximity, the disparities were obvious. One historian notes that by 1898, black and white waterfront workers in Galveston had settled into an uneasy biracial alliance, separate unions that on occasion supported one another in labor conflicts.
While unusually cooperative for the Jim Crow South, this alliance was fragile. As employers often tried to inflame racial divides to weaken the union's bargaining power, conflicts did happen historically. When union members approach the higher-ups to present their concerns and demands, what happens if the boss says, "No."?
See, what makes a union powerful is its ability to stop work, entirely disrupting the flow of business as a whole. When companies don't agree to raise wages or provide better conditions. Union members can collectively agree to lay down their tools and walk out in a strike. Instead of clocking in. The laborers spend their days outside of the business or the port, in this case, in picket lines, advocating loudly for their cause.
A strike can be empowering for the union members, and they're typically used as a last resort because they also place the laborers in a vulnerable position. Although it's unlikely the union might cover lost wages during the strike, but this is definitely not common, especially in the 18 hundreds. The biggest threat to the union and the laborers is that the companies might just hire
people to replace them entirely, and the word of the day is "scab.: Union laborers call these non-union replacements, scabs, and historically speaking, if they're brought from the Houston area, Galvestonians called them "mudcats".
This was a scene on Galveston's wharves on August 30th, 1898. The first day of a large strike, over 1500 local longshoremen, black and white, were picketing the Mallory Company seeking equal pay, 40 cents for a day of work and 50 cents for night work.
Black union leaders insisted this was comparable to what white men on the Morgan line were making for the same job. The strikers refused to unload the steamship 'Colorado'. Completely blocked access to the company's warehouse. No one was allowed across the picket line, especially the "scabs" hired by the Mallory line. One man who showed up to be a replacement told the Galveston Daily News. "We are the men who will unload that ship, and we will get union wages for it."
The first day of the strike was relatively quiet, though. Police were called in to disperse the large crowd that afternoon, but the union men were back to the picket line first thing in the morning, right on schedule. While 30 regular crew members of the vessel unloaded the cargo, Galveston's longshoremen stood by and waited. Meanwhile, the mayor of Galveston, Mr. Ashley, flew, and roughly 20 policemen attempted to control the crowd, addressing the strikers from a platform and threatening to arrest the leaders if they didn't leave the wharf.
The sequence of events of what happens next varies drastically depending on the source you're reading. Either way, three local longshoremen were killed for the cause before things were over. At around 3:30 PM, a train from Houston arrived carrying 65 Mudcats hired to break the strike and unload the cargo. As the Houston laborers got off the train, locals moved onto the wharf and convinced the Mudcats not to work using both reason and intimidation to get their point across. Things quickly grew tense, and the Galveston police began trying to disperse the crowd of union men. As Mayor Fly and the police watched a group of strikers move toward their platform. Strike leaders say that the mayor had agreed to meet with them to discuss the situation, which is why the group came forward. The mayor later stated that he had refused the proposition to meet and threatened to open fire if the men came any closer. Regardless of whether the crowd searched forward or only the delegation approached the police line, the mayor's police saw the approaching man as a threat and charged the strikers with clubs seeking to drive them back.
The crowd did not yield, however, and the mayor himself fired five shots into the massive men. He ordered his officers to follow suit as the crowd fled from the gunshots and chaos. Several people were injured, and a white striker named Thomas Baker lay dead on the scene. An African American striker named Manuel Frank Robinson was pronounced dead.
The next day, however, many men remained on the scene and, within 10 minutes, continued pressing the mayor and police. The situation continued to escalate, and at one point, 30 local men were deputized and given firearms. As the afternoon wore on, more gunfire was exchanged, and thankfully, no one else was killed that day.
Tensions finally cooled that evening when a heavy rainstorm blanketed the wharf, stopping cargo operations and sending the strikers home that night while the longshoremen denounced further violence. Mayor Fly requested backup from the governor. A 26-minute train arrived that evening, bringing with it two Gatling guns capable of firing 1,400 rounds per minute.
The next day, September 1st, the strike-breaking mudcats worked without interruption while the authorities guarded the wharves, occasionally target shooting over the waters of the port towards Pelican Island and testing the fire rate of the Gatling guns elsewhere on the island. The police arrested four strike leaders and charged them with unlawful assembly and inciting a riot.
All four were released on bond that weekend. The two men killed during the strike were laid to rest. Because of the circumstances, their services became an extraordinary expression of solidarity. Although their funerals were separate, each funeral drew over a thousand men, mainly union members. The strike continued, and just a few days later, on September 5th, the city's union celebrated Labor Day in different parts of the city.
This strike continued for two weeks, with negotiations taking place, and the Mallory Company still hiring Mudcats and out-of-towners. The wharves remained relatively quiet until late in the evening. On September 22nd, as out-of-town, non-union laborers slept, 40 to 50 disguised African American men broke into the building and opened fire, pointing their guns towards the ceiling.
Roughly 150 rounds were fired before the group fled the scene. One of the mudcats received a small wound, but overall, the intent was intimidation, not murder. Police quickly called in reinforcements. One Galveston Striker was shot and killed that night. In the aftermath, records identify that man as Charles Johnson, making him the third striker to lose his life during the 1898 conflict.
Ultimately, these 1898 strikers did not succeed in the unprecedented violence and resulting legal fallout, which intimidated the workers enough to abandon the calls for the time being. Many returned to work without an increase in pay, but continued meeting and organizing. For over 20 years, longshoremen continued working in roughly the same fashion, unions remained segregated, and black longshoremen earned less money than their white counterparts.
For the same work. However, the groups were cooperating to improve working conditions on the wharves. White Union members understood that better working conditions for black workers meant better conditions for everyone. The Black Union members felt more empowered, informed, and supported because both races worked so closely together. Many scholars argue that while race was a factor in these relationships, these segregated unions were truly connected by their socioeconomic class. All laborers, black, white, or brown, shared a common interest in improving their social and economic circumstances. This is ultimately what drove the extraordinary interracial cooperation seen in Galveston during this period, which was not common around the country.
After World War I, things were changing across the United States, and the Galveston longshoremen weren't standing up to the company men alone. In March of 1920, longshoremen from the Atlantic to the Gulf Coast organized and began striking for better wages. This was a multi-tiered, multi-port strike. On March 19th, 1600 longshoremen in Galveston, black and white alike, joined the growing nationwide strike.
Now, although the 1898 strike lasted only a short time, this one would last for months. And gain national attention. In May, the Mallory line suspended operations on the island and threatened not to return at all. The Morgan line opted to keep using non-union labor and encouraged city officials to request backup from the Texas Rangers.
Texas Governor William Hobby quickly agreed and immediately sent a company of rangers to the island to support and protect companies, authorities, and strike breakers. Both shipping companies began stoking racial tensions in Galveston to try to break the strike. The Morgan line began hiring black strike breakers while the Mallory line resumed operations using white strike breakers.
The non-union laborers kept cargo moving through the port, but local strikers continued picketing the wharves, disrupting and hindering the already slow-moving operations. The unions and the companies were at a stalemate, and the stakes were high. Galveston's longshoremen continue to march and negotiate together as the situation escalates.
According to historian Bardy Hale, after a tense emergency meeting on June 2nd, 1920. Governor William P. Hobby issued an ultimatum giving Galveston officials 72 hours to restore order or face martial law. On Monday, June 7th, 1920, Habi acted on this threat, declaring martial law and employing over 500 citizen troops, and shortly thereafter, approximately a thousand national guardsmen to occupy the city. The governor and those invested in the State's shipping business were desperate to completely break the strike.
Before long, around a thousand National Guardsmen were stationed in Galveston. Protecting non-union laborers and the company men from angry local longshoremen. However, we should note that the city commissioners, the Galveston Dock and Marine Council, and the State's labor press all denounced the action and charged that.
The real purpose behind the decision to send troops to Galveston was to assure open shop conditions in the city, protecting the interests of the businessmen over the workers. The summer of 1920 was tense with the National Guard patrolling the island and protecting the strikebreakers. The local press was censored, and criticism of the guardsmen was not tolerated.
As the summer progressed, the situation cooled as it had become clear that the shipping companies had the power of the State on their side. Even as some troops were withdrawn, the governor officially suspended city officials and the entire police department; Galveston would remain under military occupation for nearly five months.
Keep in mind, this is in the 20th century. This is one of the longest peacetime deployments of troops in any American city. Finally, on September 30th, 1920, the National Guard withdrew and left the Texas Rangers in charge of the island. Finally, in January of 1921, the Rangers left, returning the city to its elected officials and local citizens.
A deal was eventually reached with the union men, and they finally returned to work. Ultimately, the Galveston longshoremen won small raises, but not much else. The governor had sent a powerful message to unions in the State. Business comes first. The strikes of 1898 and 1920 influenced labor relations in Texas, eventually leading to the adoption of strong right-to-work laws in the mid-20th century.
Galveston's longshore unions are still active today, carrying on a legacy of solidarity while powering the island's busy port. Since 1920, Galveston has had a handful of strikes on the waterfront, but none requiring the declaration of martial law. Longshore unions continue to connect and support dock workers across the country.
Unions in general support local trades. Today, the port of Galveston is now 200 years old, from cotton screwmen to longshoremen and even strike-breaking mudcats. Galveston's docks have been the stage for some of the most dramatic and often overlooked labor struggles in Texas history. This island wasn't just moving cargo, it was shaping the future of work, solidarity, and community, and a city already famous for pirates, hurricanes, and BoomTown fortunes.
So many chapters of Galveston's past, the story of its unions, remind us that this little barrier island has always punched far above its weight, whether it was commerce, culture, or conflict. Galveston has a way of putting itself at the center of the action, and in true Galveston fashion, the fight for fair work on the wharves became not just a local story but a part of the bigger, incredible, and often chaotic history that makes this island unforgettable.
