Bloody Thursday 1934 - San Francisco Maritime Strike

During the 1934 strike by maritime workers and longshoremen, conflict erupted when the Industrial Association (consisting of employers and business interests) started moving goods from the piers to warehouses -- in an effort to break the strike.

Bloody Thursday refers to July 5, 1934 -- and to the violence that ensued between strikers and their supporters, and the police trying to contain the strike.

As goods began moving, police tried to clear the transportation track of strikers. When the strikers wouldn't budge, police began clubbing them and strikers retaliated by throwing rocks and bricks.

An article at the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco (taken from the the 1934 San Francisco Daily News) describes the Bloody Thursday events as they happened in the "no man's land" of what is now San Francisco's South of Market district.

This historical image from the San Francisco public library shows how that South of Market area appeared in 1936, two years after the strike.

The chaos grew throughout the waterfront, along the Embarcadero, to the King Street area and at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

The riots resulted in injuries as well as the deaths of strikers Nicholas Bordois and Howard Sperry, killed when policemen fired shots into the crowd at Steuart Street.

In the aftermath of Bloody Thursday, thousands of people filed down Market Street in a service for the slain strikers. Sympathy for the strikers helped fuel public support for the general strike that followed.

What began as a maritime strike grew into a general strike that included the Teamsters and blue collar workers -- the largest strike in U.S. history. The General Strike, or Big Strike, shut down San Francisco and Alameda counties for three days in July of 1934.

Shops closed, services stopped. Goods weren't transported, fuel wasn't pumped. Taxis and streetcars didn't run. Workers walked off their jobs.

From July 16 to July 19, the strikers succeeded in closing down commerce and bringing about federal arbitration, recognition of maritime unions, and improvements in wages and working conditions.

At its simplest, the Longshoreman's Strike was an effort to unionize and empower West Coast dock workers who were employed through the company hiring hall, and subject to inhumane hours and conditions, all for poverty wages.

But Bloody Thursday and the General Strike were also the culmination of the Great Depression economy and its oppressive effects on the population -- unfair labor practices, low wages, general corruption, cronyism and employment favoritism. A series of broken strikes preceded the General Strike of 1934.

Travelers to San Francisco can pay a visit to the Injury to One memorial -- a Bloody Thursday commemorative sculpture at Mission and Steuart Streets in the South of Market Area. (See the South of Market area on a Neighborhood Map.

From a plaque at the memorial site:

In memory of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise who gave their lives on Bloody Thursday, July 5, 1934, so that all working people might enjoy a greater measure of dignity and security.

Click here for photo of An Injury to One memorial sculpture.

^{Sources: Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco | ILWU Local 10 | San Francisco Public Library}