On May 26, 1939, around 2:30 a.m., Memphis police officers knocked on the door of a Black union organizer named Tom Watkins. As his young children slept, the officers led Watkins and his wife, Arlene, outside to an unmarked squad car, placing him in handcuffs. According to Watkins, the officers didn’t even let him lock his door on the way out. One officer promised he’d be “back in 30 minutes.”
The group drove toward the riverfront, stopping at the docks near Beale Street. Nearby, Watkins could see the levees that kept the Mississippi’s floodwaters at bay. As an outspoken leader in the dockworkers’ union, he was used to intimidating visits from the Memphis Police Department. But in an FBI affidavit recounting these events, Watkins noted that this night felt different.
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When they arrived, the officers led Arlene away before ordering Watkins out of the squad car. Two riverboat owners were there to meet him. As one shined a flashlight in his face, the other struck Watkins in the head with a wooden bar, telling him that “[his] time had come to an end.”
Watkins dodged another hit and started running; the officers began shooting at him. He hopped across some boats docked nearby until he fell into the Mississippi. After reaching shore, he looked for help, sneaking past more officers before finally reaching a friend’s house.
Memphis couldn’t have become a commercial hub in the early 20th century without Black people like Watkins, who built levees, carried cargo and manned riverboats. Unskilled workers known as “roustabouts” filled many different roles on the riverfront. One of those men, a riverboat worker named Tom Lee, has been remembered in local history as a hero.
They endured low pay, long hours and brutal mistreatment from white supervisors. During the 1930s, there was a fierce fight for fair working conditions along the riverbanks of the Mid-South. Black organizers and activists risked their lives to empower the river’s unseen workers, as bosses and police watched their every move.
After the Great Mississippi Flood, Black workers faced ‘virtual slavery’
Back in 1927, heavy rains caused massive flooding along the Mississippi River. The Great Mississippi Flood is often described as “the most destructive river flood in U.S. history.” Hundreds of people died and around 700,000 were displaced. High waters and ruined crops hit the Mid-South hard, especially in rural Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta.
Memphis became a center for flood relief as refugees flocked to the city. The U.S. War Department stepped in to build levees along the river, and massive work camps appeared throughout the region. According to historian Roger Biles, Mayor Watkins Overton lobbied President Herbert Hoover to expand these flood-control projects, to “help alleviate the appalling lack of employment in Memphis.”
In December 1932, Roy Wilkins, then-assistant secretary of the NAACP, and Black journalist George Schuyler traveled to Memphis to investigate the conditions of Black workers in the camps. Robert Church Jr., a wealthy Black developer and activist, “directed the men to Beale Street for work-pants, boots, and bags,” so that they could appear like working-class Southerners.
Wilkins and Schuyler adopted fake names and split up, going undercover in camps throughout the Mid-South. Once they returned to Memphis, they left quietly on a train to avoid being noticed.
The two men discovered workers in disturbing conditions — what Wilkins called “virtual slavery.” Workers commonly made $1-2 a day, if they were paid at all. Low and infrequent pay forced workers to accumulate debt in camp stores.
“Anyone who complained was fired; anyone who complained too loudly risked a beating or worse,” Wilkins recalled in his 1982 autobiography. “The more I saw, the angrier I grew.”
After their trip, the NAACP demanded a congressional investigation into the camps, an eight-hour workday and fair wages for levee workers.
Black dockworkers organized for change, despite the risks
Flood-control projects in the Mississippi — and the Black workers who maintained them — helped make the Memphis riverfront into a valuable asset. But they weren’t the only Black workers who did so. River traffic also relied on dockworkers who transported cargo on and off riverboats. Many of these riverboats were owned and managed by the War Department, too. According to labor historian Michael K. Honey, both the federal government and private companies “prized the nonunion labor that assured cheap shipment of goods up and down the river.”
Two years after the NAACP’s secret trip, Watkins arrived in Memphis. Born in Texas, Watkins had drifted across the country for years, enduring low-wage jobs, racist treatment in the military and a brief stint in prison. He became a dockworker and a business agent for the American Federation of Labor, a segregated group of unions that included dockworkers, coal workers and steelworkers.
Watkins’ coworkers respected “his intense, fiery demeanor,” writes Honey, but local businessmen called him a troublemaker and police harassed him. Even white union leaders maligned him in the press and threatened him in private.
Like levee workers, Black employees on the Memphis docks and riverboats received low wages and violent retaliation. Transportation companies maintained strict racial divisions in hiring, pay and benefits, using force to shut down complaints. In 1937, more than 50 dockworkers reported that white supervisors threatened them, beat them and demanded bribes to keep them employed.
Nevertheless, there was also a longer tradition of fierce labor fights on Southern riverfronts. In cities like New Orleans and Galveston, Black dockworkers had unionized and staged major strikes throughout the early 20th century. Sometimes these workers openly challenged their companies’ racial divisions by partnering with white workers, at a time when multiracial labor fights were uncommon.
In Depression-era Memphis, Black dockworkers fought for change through their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association — with Watkins leading the charge. In the spring of 1939, the ILA went on strike with white riverboat workers from the Inland Boatmen’s Union.
Their target was the Federal Barge Lines, the group of riverboats owned by the War Department. Over 2,500 ILA members and hundreds of IBU members walked off their jobs.
Police banned picket lines on the docks, while white union leader Lev Loring claimed the strike was illegal. But the ILA and IBU shut down the Federal Barge Lines for three weeks until they agreed to negotiate.
The two unions won new contracts, and the strikers received their jobs back. It was this victory that almost cost Watkins his life.
Watkins leaves Memphis forever
After escaping his kidnapping by the MPD, Watkins recounted the story to the FBI — with a handcuff still attached to his wrist. But the MPD’s version was completely different. Officers told The Commercial Appeal that Watkins was suspected of cutting barges from the docks. They claimed his injuries came from rolling out of a moving car. His coworkers urged the FBI to investigate further, but no one was ever arrested for trying to kill Watkins.
Watkins felt that Memphis was no longer safe, and he decided to leave. He hid among friends and coworkers for days before a group of Black women drove him to Arkansas, where he caught a bus headed north.
In the end, law enforcement in Memphis chose to let him and his wife go, and the two never returned. But Memphis’ Black workers never forgot Watkins’ leadership. The bravery of Wilkins, Schuyler and Watkins showed the urgent need — and the high cost — of standing up for dignity on the job.
To share this history, Davis used these resources for research:
- Gregg Andrews, “Black Working-Class Political Activism and Biracial Unionism: Galveston Longshoremen in Jim Crow Texas, 1919-1921” (2008)
- Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (1994)
- Roger Biles, Memphis in the Great Depression (1986)
- The Commercial Appeal Archives
- Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (1993)
- Michael K. Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (1999)
- Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination (2014)
- Roy Wilkins, “Mississippi Slavery in 1933” (1933)
- Roy Wilkins, Standing Fast: The autobiography of Roy Wilkins (1982)
Justin A. Davis is a freelance journalist, music critic and former grassroots organizer. He’s covered politics, pop culture and history for outlets like Scalawag magazine, Waging Nonviolence, Post-Trash and Science for the People. He lives in Memphis.
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