1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike

In Houston, New Orleans, and other major docks along the Gulf Coast, strikes and other labor conflict had been a regular annual occurrence through the 1930s.

[3] Nationally, maritime workers had suffered declining wages and increasingly untenable working conditions under the leadership of the International Seamen's Union, which was perceived as corrupt and inefficient.

The rejection of the ISU set the stage for street tension between unions and a long list of beatings and violent incident, throughout the year.

[6] By his own description, in a letter to West Coast leader Harry Bridges, the biggest challenge facing Mers as head of this new organization was maintaining union solidarity across racial lines.

[7] Nevertheless, another inspiration for the impending action was a small strike of black stewards on the SS Seminole of the Clyde-Mallory lines, who had refused to work in Galveston on June 13, and upon returning to New York prevented all the company's liners from sailing.

Their own former leadership in the International Seamen's Union not only disowned them, and had "beef gangs" chasing them through the street after dark since April,[9] but eagerly branded them as Communists.

The Maritime Federation also were confronted by their primary targets, the shipowners, as well as the unco-operative International Longshoremen's Association and law enforcement, which had taken "a decidedly anti-labor position".

A West Coast "Fall Strike" began on October 29, lasted 96 days, and was led by Harry Lundeberg as president of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific.