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.
April 2 - Trouble in the Sweetest Place on Earth
April 1 - The Promise of 1946
March 31 - Hospital Workers Stand United
March 30 - 15th Amendment Adopted
March 29 - West Coast Hotel v Parrish Decided
March 28 - Partial Meltdown at Three Mile Island
March 27 - FE Strikers Battle Police at Harvester
March 26 - Police Attack UE Amid ‘46 Strike Wave
March 25 - Centralia Coal Mine #5 Explodes
March 24 - Exxon Valdez Runs Aground
March 23 - Texas City Refinery Explosion Kills 15
March 22 - ERA Passes the Senate
March 21 - Truman Signs Loyalty Order
March 20 - Another Deadly Explosion
March 19 - Wartime President Pushes for Labor Peace
March 18 - Wartime Workers Betrayed
March 17 - The Hoggs Hollow Tragedy
March 16 - Big Bill Haywood Talks General Strike
March 15 - The Grapes of Wrath Opens in Theaters
March 14 - Remembering Walter Crane
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