Corpus Christi Longshoremen's Unions
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When the deepwater port of Corpus Christi opened in September 1926, area dock workers formed two racially segregated labor union affiliates of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). Caucasian workers formed ILA Local 1224 and African American workers organized ILA Local 1225. These two groups reached an agreement to work opposite ends of each ship entering the port. Work was inconsistent and physically challenging, and the two locals met monthly, participated in contract and workload negotiations, engaged in strikes and suffered lockouts when those negotiations broke down. ILA Local 1225 became a pillar in the African American community, constructing a union hall in 1930 that was used for local events and meetings. Local 1225 provided scholarships, organized picnics and supported local churches, as well as providing a respectable living for their families. Local 1224 also built a union meeting hall in 1938 and supported the community. The two locals met separately over the years, though delegates from each met jointly in periodic local councils, conventions and contract meetings. In 1975, the U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled that the segregated ILA locals must merge as they violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling took effect in 1983 and applied to all Texas longshoremen and port warehouse workers. The two locals merged into one and elected new officers. The segregated nature of the ILA locals reflected larger societal attitudes regarding race in mid-twentieth century Texas, though Corpus Christi dock workers at times bridged the racial divide when fighting for improved pay and work conditions. The day-to-day work by these longshoremen -- their challenges and successes -- made the Port of Corpus Christi the engine of the Coastal Bend economy. (2018)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Corpus Christi's deepwater port opened in 1926, dock workers formed two racially segregated locals of the International Longshoremen's Association—white Local 1224 and African American Local 1225—who agreed to work opposite ends of each ship. Both built union halls and anchored their communities with scholarships, picnics, and church support, even as they bargained, struck, and endured lockouts. In 1975 a federal appeals court ruled the segregated locals violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in 1983 they merged into one.
Why it matters
The longshoremen's story captures both the entrenched segregation of mid-century Texas labor and the civil-rights law that finally forced these unions—and the port they powered—into a single house.
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Related events
- · Merger of ILA Locals 1224 and 1225 (1983)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Solomon Coles (1844-1924) and Solomon Coles School
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Born enslaved in Petersburg, Virginia, Solomon Coles learned to read from a sheriff who broke the law to teach him, then worked his way through college as the first Black student at Connecticut's Guilford Institute, earning degrees at Lincoln University and Yale. He came to Texas in 1877 and, believing education essential for Black children, left the ministry to teach and lead the Corpus Christi school for Black students who then attended only two months a year. A high school built in 1925 was named in his honor, later becoming Solomon M. Coles Elementary School.
Rabbi Sidney A. Wolf
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A trained pianist ordained in 1932, Rabbi Sidney A. Wolf came to Corpus Christi's Temple Beth El for a three-month trial that became a forty-year career. In the Jim Crow years he championed integration and interfaith worship—regularly inviting African American pastors and choirs to his pulpit and trading Thanksgiving sermons with an Episcopal rector—and in 1945 he helped found the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra.
Julius Lichtenstein House
Corpus Christi, TX
Julius Lichtenstein came to Corpus Christi as a small child when his family opened a drygoods store in 1874, a business that grew into the respected M. Lichtenstein and Sons, relied upon across South Texas. Head of the firm after his father's death in 1904, Julius developed a taste for architecture on his eastern buying trips and in 1905 built this Colonial Revival house—stately and elliptical-porched—in a style then made fashionable by New York's Stanford White. The family moved to a larger home in 1913, and the house was relocated nine blocks north in 1929.
Sidbury House
Corpus Christi, TX
Charlotte Scott Sidbury (1830–1904), a North Carolina native who came to Texas before the Revolution, built this Victorian house around 1893. A civic leader and bank director, she took over her late husband's lumber company and constructed rental houses during the 'Ropes boom,' when Colonel E.H. Ropes tried and failed to dredge Corpus Christi into a deep-water port. The elaborately galleried structure was later home to Padre Island rancher Patrick Dunn and was moved to Old Irishtown in 1926.