The ILWU Drill Team. Back row (l-r): Vincent Norris; Executive Capt. Trevyn McCoy; Gail Trevors; Josh Williams; Capt. Ed Thomas; Andre Dawkins; Sabrina Giles; Kavern Dixon; Boon Pho.  Frobt row (l-r): Andrea "Fearless" Johnson; Paul "From the Hall" Williams; Martin Dominguez.  Kneeling: Lorie Marshall; Beth Susim.  Photo by Martin Dominguez.


This year’s Juneteenth celebration in San Francisco honored the role of African American maritime workers by placing the ILWU Drill Team at the front of the parade. Longshore Local 10 retiree Josh Williams, in his fortieth year with the team, was parade Grand Marshall and his team took first prize as “Best Drill Team.”

San Francisco’s 57th annual Juneteenth celebration, held June 16-17 in the Fillmore district, brought tens of thousands of people to the city in one of the largest ever gatherings of African Americans in Northern California.

Juneteenth celebrates the end of the Civil War, also known as the war to end slavery. On June 19, 1865, nearly three years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, federal troops read a proclamation in Galveston, Texas. It stated that all slaves are free and that “this involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.”

—Tom Price