Labor pains
Recall city’s ugly worker rights battles.
In Texas, where the popularity of labor unions rivals the general affection for dry brisket, you may be tempted to spend Labor Day relishing doorbuster sales and considering whether to mothball those new but seldom worn white pants.
We encourage you to take a few moments to remember the folks who brought you this blessed Monday off — and the blessed Saturday and Sunday as well. The U.S. labor movement, through the struggle and sacrifice of the workers and leaders, is the reason we have the regular two-day weekend and the eight-hour work day.
Labor movement history is often forgotten — even the events that happened here in Houston.
During the early-1900s, the National Maritime Union was a powerful force at the Port of Houston, but its internal politics were often torn between a left-wing faction and an anti-leftist faction more aligned with the Democratic Party. That tension came to blows when Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace visited Houston during his 1948 presidential campaign.
Wallace’s platform seems tame today: higher minimum wage, lowering the voting age to 18 and creating public day care centers for working mothers. Two positions drew controversy: He wanted peace with the Soviet Union, and he supported desegregation.
The latter drew the greatest ire from Houstonians. Wallace refused to speak before a segregated audience, and for two days he traveled from speech to radio station to press conference while being harassed by hecklers. The Houston Post even ran an editorial titled “Omelets for Wallace.” One audience member took the writing to heart and tossed eggs at Wallace. Meanwhile, his Houston supporters received threatening phone calls, and their children were bullied at school.
Wallace didn’t seem too concerned with winning over locals. One speech condemned “Mr. Houston,” Jesse H. Jones, for refusing to support socially progressive legislation while in President Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet. Wallace then tried to stay at the Rice Hotel, owned by Jones. The hotel refused to admit Edith Roberts, Wallace’s black secretary, and they ended up staying at a supporter’s home. About 2 a.m., Western Union arrived with a telegram reading: “Get out of town!”
Wallace’s candidacy did offer a rallying point for early members of the Texas civil rights movement: NAACP leader Lulu Belle Madison White and attorney Ben Ramey, who represented Heman Sweatt in his fight to integrate the University of Texas law school.
Wallace’s campaign also sparked a purge of leftists from the maritime union and attacks on civil rights activists and left-wing politicos in a Houston-style Red Scare. Wallace’s visit marked the beginning of the end of a long history of organized labor in Houston. Even so, it’s a history worth remembering.