Save 28 Innocent Men!
by Michael Munk
and Don Patch
| This article first appeared in issue 19 of Buttons
and Ballots, in Fall 1998. |
A recent interview with ILWU Local 8 retiree Marvin Ricks, 87, provided
answers about the origin of the "Save 28 Innocent ILA Union Men"
button. It was sold in Portland, Oregon in the late summer of 1934 to raise
a defense fund for 28 longshoremen jailed on murder charges related to the
celebrated west coast maritime strike that had just ended with a victory
for the strikers.
After their 3 month strike, ILA longshoremen went back to work at the
end of July believing they had won their major demand--control of the hiring
hall. Yet employers defiantly continued to use their former fink hall on
NE 14th Avenue and Albina Street citing commitment to the scabs with which
they had tried to break the strike. After several confrontations between
scabs and union members, a large group of ILA men attacked the fink hall
on August 20 and when the resulting battle ended James Connor, a young scab,
was dead of a gunshot wound inside the hall. Portland police originally
arrested 32 longshormen on murder charges and quickly released four of them,
leaving 28 in jail for over six weeks before all charges were dropped.
Only one of the ILA men, Art Shearer, was ever tried and he was found
not guilty. Eventually, the evidence pointed to Connor having been shot
by mistake by another scab who was aiming at the attacking strikers.
Ricks, the only member of the "28" known to be alive and perhaps
the only '34 vet still in Portland, recalled when he retired from the ILWU
in 1976 that "The frame didn't work, they had to drop the charges,
as well as lesser charges of felonious assault and rioting. None of the
scabs were indicted, it was union men who went to jail. The food was terrible!"
| © 1998 by Michael Munk and Don Patch |
Many thanks to Michael Munk and Don Patch for sharing the information
about this button's history, and for writing this interesting article. Both
men are retired and spend their time working on issues related to labor
history.
