Marine Workers Historical Collection 1930-1996

ArchivalResource

Marine Workers Historical Collection 1930-1996

The Marine Workers Historical Collection was the result of a community history project on the Chelsea area of New York City conducted by Joe Doyle, then a New York University Department of Public History graduate student, beginning in 1981. Doyle set out to reconstruct and document the working-class population and institutions of the Chelsea waterfront of New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. The project was continued and expanded in partnership with the Marine Workers Historical Association. The collection includes rank-and-file newsletters, flyers, union correspondence, grievance reports, pamphlets, memoirs, memorabilia and printed ephemera of many kinds documenting the working and living conditions of American merchant seamen/women since 1900 and the struggle of maritime workers, particularly sympathizers of the Left, to organize and maintain leadership in the National Maritime Union (NMU) and other unions.

3.75 linear feet; in 4 record cartons and one folder.

Related Entities

There are 14 Entities related to this resource.

National Maritime Union

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63w07js (corporateBody)

The National Maritime Union (NMU) was an American labor union founded in May 1937 representing workers in the merchant marine. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in July 1937. After a failed merger with a different maritime group in 1988, the union merged with the Seafarers International Union of North America in 2001....

Marine Workers Historical Association (U.S.)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w69t78fp (corporateBody)

The Marine Workers Historical Collection was the result of a community history project on the Chelsea area of New York City conducted by Joe Doyle, then a New York University Department of Public History graduate student, beginning in 1981. Doyle set out to reconstruct and document the working-class population and institutions of the Chelsea waterfront of New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. Chelsea was a center of shipping and there was a sizable Irish presence...

Bridges, Harry, 1901-1990

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6ng4nzg (person)

Harry Renton Bridges, also known as Alfred Renton Byrant Bridges, came to the United States in 1920 from Australia where he had been a seaman and involved in union activities. Bridges continued to be active on the docks in fighting for labor rights and was instrumental in getting the International Longshore Association (ILA), an affiliate of the AF of L, recognized as the bargaining unit for the entire Pacific coast. He became president of ILA Local 34-36 and in 1936 its Pacific Coast preside...

Marine Cooks and Stewards Association of the Pacific Coast

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6wq6h86 (corporateBody)

Hall, Paul

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6m48snv (person)

Postek, Stanley, 1912-1991.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pc5r9v (person)

Stanley Postek was born Ladislaus J. Szeliga on February 5, 1912, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Mr. Postek was a visible unionist throughout his life. He left school in the mid-thirties and went to the sea. He was a union organizer for the International Seamen's Union of America at the age of twenty-five, and as the rank and file broke away to form the National Maritime Union, so did he. Shortly thereafter, he volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade serving in Spain. In World War Tw...

Bailey, Bill

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rn5344 (person)

Longshoremen activist. From the description of Bill Bailey oral history transcripts and related papers, [ca. 1970-1978]. (University of California, Berkeley). WorldCat record id: 233004149 ...

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6d25sjt (corporateBody)

In the years following World War II, rank-and-file members of the International Longshoremen's Association became increasingly restive as a result of dissatisfaction with union contracts. Finally, in the fall of 1951, a series of unauthorized strikes was climaxed by a twenty-one day wildcat strike in the Port of New York. The strikers included several high-ranking ILA officials and a future president, Thomas Gleason. The strike ended when a board of inquiry to investigate the strike...

International Seamen's Union of America

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rz3r5s (corporateBody)

Doyle, Joe

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67p934b (person)

Wirtz, Willard, 1912-2010

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6445nc4 (person)

Government executive. From the description of Reminiscences of William Willard Wirtz : oral history, 1969. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 122343066 ...

Seafarers' International Union of North America

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pw10jj (corporateBody)

The Historical Research Department of the Seafarers International Union (SIU) kept extensive files on Joseph Curran, president of the NMU from 1937 until his death in 1981. “Big Joe” Curran, then an inactive member of the conservative International Seaman’s Union, founded the Seaman’s Defense Committee during a wildcat strike in 1936 on the Panama Pacific Line's S.S. California. The Committee was renamed the National Maritime Union in 1937, and Curran became its first president. He ...

Gladstone, John, 1917-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w69b44qn (person)

Curran, Joseph Edwin, 1906-1981

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62f9hqz (person)

Labor union executive. From the description of Reminiscences of Joseph Curran : oral history, 1964. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 309731534 ...