Bill Chester: ILWU Civil Rights and Community Leader, 1938-1969
ILWU Oral History Project
Volume VI, Part I
Introduction by Harvey Schwartz
This is the first of a new three-part series featuring important leaders in the ILWU’s history. To honor Black History Month, the February article focuses on Bill Chester (1914-1985), the union’s first Black International officer.
In 1938 Chester became a member of ILWU Bargemen’s Local 22, a Northern California organization that later merged with San Francisco Bay Area ILWU Longhore Local 10. Bill Chester was associated with the struggle for human rights throughout his career. He was especially active in Local 10 during the post-World War II years. Chester was appointed Northern California Regional Director in 1951. He was elected International Vice President in 1969 and retired from that office eight years later.
As Regional Director, The Dispatcher observed in a 1985 memorial, “Chester was a chief spokesman, organizer, strategist, and ambassador from the ILWU to the rest of the community in Northern California.” The oral history material here, collected just weeks after Chester took office as International vice president, reinforces that assertion.
Among his many accomplishments, Chester helped organize Black and Mexican American cotton compress workers in California’s Central Valley into the ILWU during the 1950s. In the 1960s he played an instrumental role when Local 10 hosted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and made him an honorary member. Chester also contributed significantly in 1969 as mediator of an important teachers’ strike at San Francisco State University.
The year after he became International Vice President, Chester was appointed by San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto to the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART). He served with distinction and became board vice-president (1972) and president (1973) during the critical period during the launch of the BART system.
Chester’s testimony below centers on his civil rights activism and the ILWU’s role as a leader in the human rights struggle throughout Northern California. Along the way, he recreates the Black experience in the union. And he explains how the ILWU reached out for allies in the wider community in its pursuit of equality and dignity for all people and how the union used its power to wrest justice from a reluctant power structure.
The interview excerpted here was conducted in San Francisco by Robert Martin for the Civil Rights Documentation Project at Howard University in 1969, which accounts for Chester’s use of the archaic term “Negro” to refer to African Americans throughout the text. This interview is now part of the Ralph Bunche Oral History Collection at Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. We are greatly indebted to the Center for releasing the interview for use as the basis of this article. Special thanks for their help to Center Curator Joellen ElBashir and to Mrs. Ethel Chester.
BILL CHESTER
Edited by Harvey Schwartz, Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection
I’m the son of a railroad worker. I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1914. My early school days were spent in Kansas City, Missouri. After high school I went to Western College in Kansas for two years. My father died when I was 11 years old. I had no sisters or brothers, but my mother and I were like pals in the early ages coming through the depression of the 1930s.
Because of the depression I had to interrupt my education. I enlisted in the 25th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army and was stationed for three years at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. We were an all-Negro unit. This was before integration took place in the army. There were only two Negroes in official capacity at that time, the chaplain and a warrant officer. I was dissatisfied that there were no Negro line officers. It was at that point that I started thinking about the social evils of our country. That was the very beginning of my thinking about civil rights.
Some people who were visiting the fort told me about San Francisco. I had read a little about it and my company commander was from that city. There was something that struck me about the way they spoke about the town. When I was discharged—this was in the late 1930s, prior to World War II—I decided to travel to California to take a look.
When I arrived in San Francisco I had the names and addresses of a couple of friends who were shipping out in the old Marine Cooks and Stewards Association (MCS). When I got there they were at sea, so I took a room at the YMCA. It happened that about a block away, on the Embarcadero, was the hiring hall of the longshoremen’s union. Being out of a job, I was told they hired there. So I went up, stood in line, and got work. That was the start of my employment in the maritime industry.
When I first entered the labor movement on the San Francisco waterfront there were only 75 Blacks in the longshore local. They weren’t very active. Most of them were Blacks who had originally been brought out by the Luckenbach Steamship Company for the purpose of strike breaking. But our International president at that time, Harry Bridges, told me he went down and talked with these workers and persuaded them to join the 1934 strike and come into the union. Most of these workers were well-meaning men who made a contribution in the union to the best of their abilities.
I continued in employment in the maritime industry around San Francisco from 1938 until World War II. By then it was the early 1940s. At that time I was called back into the service and stayed there until the war ended in 1945. When I came back to San Francisco I was reinstated to ILWU membership. I’ve been here ever since.
The great influx of Blacks into the maritime industry on the West Coast started during World War II. There was a great shortage of manpower in the longshore industry because of the many ships that had to be loaded. The armed forces had to be supplied. The longshore work force in the San Francisco area went from about 3,200 to 10,000. It was then that Blacks who were working in some closed Gulf Coast ports migrated to California. The ILWU on the waterfront was one of the few unions in San Francisco where they could get a job without discrimination.
On the other hand, policies of discrimination existed in the ILWU on the West Coast, although the union’s International constitution forbade it. The Portland longshore local excluded Negroes for a number of years. To bring about equality and truly elimi nate discrimination, a group of us San Francisco area Blacks formed ourselves into what nowadays you’d call a Black Caucus. But in those days, in the 1940s, we just called it getting the boys together to talk over a problem.
It was really about five or six of us at the beginning. We would get together and talk about what should be done to eliminate “visual” discrimination. We felt that the number one job was that Blacks had to prove that they were just as good if not better union men than the Whites. Their performance on the job and at meetings had to be outstanding in going along with poli cies that were constructive and opposing policies that we felt were de structive.
From that basis, we felt that any time there were new members to be admitted to the union, representation of all the races in the community should be there. This policy succeeded to the extent that we’ve come from 75 Black members in 1940 to the point where now about 51 per cent of the longshore membership in the Port of San Francisco is Black.
We were fortunate in the beginning, too, to find a group of well-mean ing “progressive Whites,” as we called them, who would work with us. They were not in our caucus but they knew what we were doing. At membership meetings, as we presented our program, we more or less had their unqualified support. Most of them were somewhat older men. Many have been pensioned off or have passed on. They were a fine coalition of progressive Whites that gave us every bit of help that we needed.
The first leadership job I had within the union in San Francisco was as shop steward of the gang on the ship that I worked in. Then I was elected chairman of the union’s investigating committee, which evaluates men for promotions to different job categories. It also investigates potential new members. I suppose that where I became more known was during the 1948 longshore strike, when I was elected chairman of the publicity committee. In those days there was a White majority, but I got enough White support to get elected.
As far as jobs are concerned, today we have a longshore union membership committee of four. I’m the chairman. The employers also have four people. Since 1959 this joint committee’s been intact. All the workers who have been admitted to the longshore industry in the Port of San Francisco have been approved by this joint committee. The committee on the union’s side has had progressive-minded, thinking Whites. The strangest thing is that we’ve educated the employers, too. When we get ready to register men now, the employers will say, “Bill, did you make sure you got some Black people from Hunter’s Point in San Francisco? Did you take care of the people from West Oakland?”
For some of this progress you have to give credit to the people from Hunter’s Point and West Oakland, because they made their wishes known with a loud, clear voice. Well, each time we’ve admitted men our joint committee’s been lucky enough. I put it this way since at least 50 percent of all the new people registered have been Black.
Later this year we’re going to register 600 new men. We’re processing applications now. In selecting the 600, we gave representation to the Black community, to the Brown community, to the Yellow community, and to the White community too, where that’s located in poverty areas.
In 1951 I was asked by International President Harry Bridges to accept appointment as the ILWU Northern California Regional Director for the territory covering Fresno to the Oregon border. I accepted and served as Regional Director for 18 years.
This year I was elected International Vice President. Jack Hall, our great Hawaii Regional Director who organized the Islands, wanted to run for the job. The Blacks, Mexican Americans and liberal Whites felt it was necessary for me to make a race for the job, too, because our union couldn’t be one step behind the times. We took the position that with the people in the South on the move, as liberal as our Whites were at the International level, it was about time some Black made a contest for that job.
Our union was so broad-minded that the members amended the International Constitution and added another vice president. So Jack got elected vice president and so did I. People felt confrontation might tend to destroy Black and White unity. After evaluating things, they decided there was a need for another vice president. We’d had one in the past and we had eliminated it. Since that time we had increased our membership, so we added one back.
Once the Blacks in the ILWU started making the move for full equality, change filtered throughout the entire maritime industry. When I first started there wasn’t a Black girl working in the office. Since then we’ve had three Black office managers. Some 11 years ago I was asked by the employers’ group, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), to recommend a Black for the job of port captain. I recommended a member of our union who is still the port captain for Pacific Far East Lines.
Unions in the industry like the Marine Firemen, Oilers, Watertenders and Wipers’ Association (MFOW) once had a policy of exclu sion of Blacks. But because of the appearance of Blacks in the ILWU we got Blacks into the MFOW. We were also able to break down the lily white structure in the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (SUP). In all of the various branches of the maritime industry, including the organizations of ships’ officers, we’ve caused the other unions to take notice and break down discrimination.
We also went outside of the labor movement to bring our union programs to the wider community. This is something we discussed years ago. We found that, in a sense, the union is the community. Therefore, a labor leader in modern times could no longer confine all of his activities just to collective bargain ing and not take the respon sibility of following that worker to his community to see that he had the same protection there that he had on the job.
We found that many members of our union–practically all of the Blacks—were members of the NAACP. Some were chairmen of the Board of Trustees at Baptist and Methodist churches. So as Black leaders in the trade union movement, we worked collectively with the Baptist ministers group, or any other religious or civic organization.
Our first alliances were with ministers with churches about the size of this living room. Later the more sophisticated minister came along. I have attended many of the Baptist ministers’ meetings that they hold on the ministerial alliance level. I have always been made welcome because I’ve always gone there to talk about unity between the clergy, the rest of the community, and the trade union movement.
One of the ministers I work closely with now is Dr. Hamilton Boswell. He impressed me greatly with his theory that he didn’t believe in telling people how they were going to live in heaven if he couldn’t help them live well here on earth.
If a church needed some money to buy a bus to bring kids to Sunday school, we took the lead in the union in saying, “We’re going to donate 250 dollars toward that bus.” Every year we bought a $500 membership in the NAACP. We sponsored St. Francis Square, a low cost housing project in San Francisco’s Western Addition that opened in 1963.
We went into every aspect of community life. We encouraged our Black members to deposit with savings and loan associations run by Blacks. The union did business with Kaiser Hospital, so we met with Edgar Kaiser and said, “We want some Black interns and Black physicians on the staff.” Everywhere we could we made the union’s weight felt. Not only did we do that for the Black community, we did it for the Brown community, too.
We went to City Hall in San Francisco and told the mayor, “There’s not a Black supervisor up there. We don’t feel the city right now is sophisticated enough to elect one, but you appoint one, and we’ll elect him next time.” We were successful in getting Terry Francois appointed as the first Black supervisor. We followed that up by getting the first Mexican American appointed, and we’re working now on getting a Chinese person appointed. Then we’ll fight for their re-election. We were successful in electing Willie Brown as assemblyman for the 18th Assembly District, too.
We’ve also used the union’s strength to get Blacks hired in private industry. For example, we got $60 million of pension fund money in the Bank of America. I am one of the trustees. So I told the bank officials, “You are using my door and my money and my members. I’d like to see some Black girls and boys around here in some of these banks.” This is the way you have to be to get the job done.
Because of the way San Francisco Blacks in the longshore industry have gotten along with their White allies and been able to utilize their union strength in the community, they have also served to break down racial discrimination in most of the other trade unions in town. San Francisco is one of the most unionized cities in the United States. But for a number of years we didn’t have Black plumbers or electricians. There was nothing in the building trades. Yet as a result of community pressure, and of showing that it can be done and can work, we’ve been able to crack through in some of the building trades locals. We’re beginning to make overall progress.
Here’s another example of the kinds of things we’ve done. In 1945 we had a Negro named Audry Cole. He passed the San Francisco civil service exam to drive streetcars for the city. He took his first car out and drove it to the beach. Some Whites pulled him off the car and whipped him. They didn’t want Negroes to drive streetcars. We said, “Cole, you’re going to drive that car.” Then guys in our union–there were always four or five of us–would ride the streetcar whenever he was driving. We rode in shifts, putting in two hours apiece. He didn’t have any more trouble. As a result, today 55 per cent of all the people who drive buses and streetcars in San Francisco are Negroes.
Around 1951 I was appointed West Coast Regional Director for the old National Negro Labor Council. I remember when we had a delegation that went into Sears and Roebuck and demanded that Negro sales girls be employed. We were politely told that they didn’t think the public would accept it. Besides, they said this was a policy matter that would have to go to the national offi cials of the firm in the East.
So we promptly put up a picket line where a new Sears and Roebuck facility was under construction. We used ILWU signs and banners along with National Negro Labor Council signs. We knew that even though you might catch a local union where their own policies were discriminatory, if you had what they considered a bona fide picket line in front of any establishment, they wouldn’t cross it.
Well, the Teamsters wouldn’t deliver. The building trades people wouldn’t work. Construction stopped. So the company officials came out from Chicago and assured us that when the store opened, all people would be hired regardless of race. If you go to Sears and Roebuck now, you’ll find Black buyers, sales girls, and everything else.
We were pretty well established by the 1950s as a group of workers who didn’t just look at their own selfish points of view as far as what they had economically. We were willing to participate and spread the experience that we had learned in the trade union movement. In my experience, the best avenue of success is proper organization. And I found that the Black community had all of the potentials. It was just a question of organizing and putting it together to where they could collectively go down and talk with the power structure to get some benefits from it.