In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a tradition of biracial unionism sprang up among waterfront workers along the Gulf Coast. Galveston's waterfront workers formed some of Texas' earliest and strongest labor organizations in an era when the city was a leading seaport and the most important commercial center in Texas.
Foremost among these workers were the white cotton screwmen, whose skill and economic importance in the loading of cotton enabled them to control the labor supply as well as wages and working conditions. As the importance of cotton screwing declined in the...