On this day in labor history, the year was 1953.
That was the day 26,000 members of the ILWU in Hawaii walked off the job.
Their strike was a four-day protest against the witch-hunt convictions of the Hawaii Seven.
Many docks and plantations immediately shut down.
Stevedores refused to load military cargo headed to the war in Korea.
At the height of the McCarthyite Red Scare, union militants continued to be the primary targets of the anti-Communist hysteria.
Longshoreman leader Jack Hall and six-codefendants had just been tried and convicted under the Smith Act.
The ILWU denounced the trial and verdict as a frame-up.
It was the ultimate move to bust the increasingly powerful union on the islands.
The ILWU had come under heightened surveillance after successfully organizing stevedores and many sugar and pineapple plantations.
The real trouble began after a long and bitter dock strike in 1949.
Then Nebraska Senator Hugh Butler proclaimed the island to be firmly in the grips of a Communist attack.
HUAC arrived the next year to investigate the ‘Red Situation.’
In August 1951, the FBI conducted early morning raids to arrest the Seven on charges of violating the Smith Act.
The arrests came just as the ILWU threatened a sugar strike, having reached an impasse in contract negotiations.
During the trial, it was clear the Seven were being tried not for anything they did, but for allegedly being part of a vast and secret conspiracy.
The proceedings had the quality of a show trial, designed more to terrorize the public and labor movement, than to prosecute any actual crime.
Their convictions were finally overturned with the landmark 1957 Yates decision, which rendered much of the Smith Act unenforceable.
May 18 - The TVA Transforms the South
May 17 - Striking for Dignity and Respect
May 16 - Minneapolis Teamsters Lead the Way
May 15 - The Winnipeg General Strike Begins
May 14 - Wobblies On the Waterfront
May 13 - Women Strike Tolteca Foods
May 12 - Of ICE Raids & Union Busting
May 11 - Organizing in the Fields
May 10 - Bankruptcy Bonanza for Big Bankers
May 9 - The Historic ‘34 West Coast Maritime Strike Begins
May 8 - Mary Marcy is Born
May 7 - Popeye The Union Man
May 6 - FDR Rolls Out the WPA
May 5 - The Bay View Massacre
May 4 - UE Beats Back HUAC in Dayton
May 3 - First Workers Compensation Law is Passed
May 2 - Our Thing is DRUM!
May 1 - Mayday Marchers Attacked in Cleveland
April 30 - Refinery Workers Walk Off the Job
April 29 - Allis-Chalmers and the Road to Taft-Hartley
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