World War II Homefront Era: 1940s: Post War Workers Protest Salary Cuts & Layoffs
Labor protest Pioneer Dairy Company, Port Chicago.. March 5, 1947. Photographer unknown. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. The Oakland Tribune Collection. Gift of ANG Newspapers.
In this photo, milk wagon driver Joseph C. King refuses to cross the picket line and make deliveries to the Port Chicago naval base on Mare Island. In the spring of 1947, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union called a strike at Port Chicago as part of a series of Bay Area protests against rising prices and low wages. Perhaps union solidarity was further strengthened by the recent memory of the infamous 1944 munitions explosion at the navel base under suspicious circumstances, which killed all 320 men on duty, including 258 African American sailors.
Other resources:
Embattled Dreams: California In War and Peace 1940-1950 by Kevin Starr (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Internet links:
Harry Truman and the Labor Movement
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/nf/featured/truman/
laborissues.html
The Truman Presidency: Demobilization and Reconversion
www.lexisnexis.com/academic/2upa/Aph/truman_docs/
guide_intros/tru4.htm
An Idealist in Congress: The Early Life and Times of Jerry Voorhis
www.csupomona.edu/~library/LibraryInfo/special/Voorhis/book1/
ContentsTable.html
(note sections on his fourth and fifth congressional terms)