Memorial Doesn’t Pay Much Respect to Slain Longshoremen

On Harry Bridges Boulevard in the Port of Los Angeles is a historic landmark that is notable for its obscurity. It gets no visitors. Nor does it even mention the names of the slain longshoremen it is supposed to honor.

The little-known monument, which was built by the port, anonymously commemorates Dickie Parker of San Pedro and John Knudson of Lomita. Armed guards hired by shipping lines shot them to death during the 1934 strike that led to the unionization of West Coast dockworkers.

When the stone and bronze column was erected 15 years ago, Los Angeles port officials thought the site appropriate because of its proximity to Berth 145, the spot where Parker and Knudson were killed.

Today, a group of longshore pensioners think their martyred brothers deserve better. Their members are weary of the monument’s grim industrial setting of cargo containers, vacant lots and shabby warehouses awaiting redevelopment.

“People just don’t know it’s there,” said Art Almeida, a retired dockworker and outgoing president of the San Pedro Bay Historical Society. “Parker and Knudson were the first of six to die in the struggle, and their names aren’t on the plaque. It’s a real sin of omission.”

Three other dockworkers and a merchant seaman were later killed in San Francisco and Seattle during the two-month strike. Hundreds were injured.

Almeida said the memorial should be listed as an official state landmark and moved to a more attractive and visible place at the harbor, perhaps at the nearby Banning’s Landing boat launch area, if the port ever completes its 10-year-old project to build a waterfront community center there. Just as significant, dockworkers want Parker and Knudson mentioned somewhere on the monument--by name.

The landmark’s bronze plaque makes a general reference to the 1934 strike and those killed or injured during violent confrontations among strikers, strikebreakers and police in Los Angeles and other West Coast ports.

Supporting the relocation is the Southern California Pensioners Group of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Lou Loveridge, the organization’s president, has begun discussing the issue with the city’s Harbor Department, which has agreed to help find a new site. Further meetings have yet to be scheduled.

“In all my years here, I think I have only seen one person actually visit the place,” said Dennis McCarbery, the public information director for the Port of Los Angeles. “It should be moved. The site is very isolated.”

After starting work at the port, McCarbery said he heard about the memorial and went out to find it one day. That took awhile. He recalled that he had to check all four corners of Bridges Boulevard and Neptune Avenue before he came upon the monument, which is set back from the street.

“It’s sort of an oasis,” McCarbery said.

The 5-foot-high memorial, with its palm trees and red-brick walk, sits on port property in Wilmington. It lies between a bus stop and a storage yard filled with truck chassis and cargo containers.

The monument is bordered on two sides by a chain-link fence laced with blue strips and topped with coils of barbed wire. Every few minutes, a big rig rumbles past on Bridges. It is hard for passing motorists to spot.

“It’s no use having a memorial if it can’t be seen,” said Ed Thayne, 95, of Harbor City, who was a dockworker for 43 years. “There was a hell of crowd when it was dedicated. I went, but I have to say I was kind of surprised harbor officials put it there.”

Thayne, who participated in the 1934 strike, said it’s too bad, because Parker and Knudson lost their lives at a turning point in labor history. Their actions helped the fledgling International Longshoremen’s Assn. come to power on the West Coast after decades of failed strikes to improve pay, benefits and workplace safety.

The International Longshoremen’s Assn. was replaced in 1937 by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which under the leadership of Harry Bridges developed into one of the most powerful and successful unions in the country.

Shipping companies “cut our wages four or five times before we went on strike,” Thayne recalled. “If you got hurt on the job, the company just sent you home. If the boss didn’t like you, you were blacklisted.”

Parker and Knudson were shot on May 15, 1934, as scores of International Longshoremen’s Assn. members stormed the barricades at Berth 145 to tear up the camps of strikebreakers, or “finks,” as union members called them.

Spotlights and tracers fired by police and private security guards lit up the night sky. Clubs, rocks, tools--anything that happened to be available--became weapons in the battle. Minutes after it started, bullets, randomly fired into the crowd, struck Parker and Knudson. At least 25 other people were injured, including two policemen, before the fight was over.

Six had died by the time the strike ended on July 16. The worst day of violence occurred on July 5, when police charged a picket line in San Francisco, killing two strikers and injuring hundreds.

“I saw Dickie Parker get shot,” said Thayne, who used to picket the old Red Car stop where strikebreakers arrived in the Port of Los Angeles. “We’ve come a long way since then. The more people who can see the memorial, the better.”