For a while, Black and white dockworkers in New Orleans stood side by side, fighting for the same cause. Fair wages. Decent working conditions. Equal opportunity.
It brings to mind the chorus of a song: “Ebony and ivory, living in perfect harmony,” which Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder sang nearly a century later in their 1982 hit. But in the late 1800s, this harmony was not part of a song. It was real.
“Throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s, Black and white dockworker unions worked together to promote fair working conditions and wages for their workers along the New Orleans waterfront,” Black Past states. “In 1892, the year of the New Orleans general strike … dockworker unions agreed to share work equally between white and Black workers.”…