Overview

Powerful labor movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii, beginning in the 1930s, when International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) representatives were dispatched to the islands to organize plantation and dock laborers. They were stunned by the feudal conditions they found in Hawaii, where the majority of workers-Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino in origin-were routinely subjected to repression and racism at the hands of white bosses. During the 1950s, just as the ILWU began a series of successful strikes and organizing drives, the union came under McCarthyite attacks and persecution. In the midst of these allegations, Hawaii's bid for statehood was being challenged by powerful voices in Washington while Jim Crow advocates worried that Hawaii's representatives would be enthusiastic supporters of pro-civil rights legislation. Hawaii's extensive social welfare system and the continuing power of unions to shape the state politically are a direct result of those troubled times. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne's gripping story of Hawaii workers' struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.

Full Product Details

9780824835026

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available