The first seamen's union in the United States

[pnorman]

http://www.cwa4319.org/powell.html

pnorman

[Jackpine Radical]

1. So when do the ova get their own union?

[dipsydoodle]

2. That association

usually comes in being here when there is a Seamans strike by that section of the Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers Union. Invariably played with as being a semen strike.......lol.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I didn't mean to implant any ideas or egg you on,

But this is certainly fertile ground for all kinds of misconceptions.

[pnorman]

4. I first spotted that in a book, "FROM THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU THE WEEKEND" (The Labor Movement)

The discussion concerned the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the role of blacks in the early US labor movement. I thought that it was of some significance, that the first seamen's union in this country was organized by a black seaman

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William P. Powell, Champion of Black Sailors

William P. Powell is credited with exposing and denouncing vicious labor practices against black sailors in the 1800s. He was one of several thousand seaman who sailed regularly from the port of New York City.

Sailors were lower-class citizens and black sailors were treated even worse. When free Northern black sailors entered a southern port, Powell wrote that they were imprisoned "for no other crime than of having colored skin."

Powell launched the Colored Seaman's Home in 1839 and ran it for a quarter century. He was dedicated to anti-slavery causes and petitioned Congress and Northern state legislatures to expose the jailing of black sailors in the south.

In 1863, Powell helped found the American Seamen's Protective Union Association, the first seamen s organization in the United States.
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I fail to understand the sophomoric attempts at humor that this had elicited.

pnorman

[Omaha Steve]

5. Perfect post

This is Black History month.