Cleophas Williams: My Life Story in the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 Book Talk

Thursday July 20, 2023 | 5-7PM

at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy Street SF, CA 94102

Free! No registration required.

LaborFest presents a book talk with leading radical African American trade unionist Clarence Thomas who will discuss a newly published book of writings by Cleophas Williams, the first African American president of storied SF union ILWU Local 10. 

In concert with TLM’s ongoing special exhibit, Education for Action: California Labor School 1942-1957, LaborFest presents a book talk with Clarence Thomas, leading radical African American trade unionist and 3rd generation retired member of International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 who organized (and wrote an introduction to) a new book called Cleophas Williams: My Life Story in the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 (DeClare Publishing, 2023). 

This book is a compilation of Cleophas Williams’ writings—selected by Clarence Thomas and edited by Delores Lemon-Thomas, in consultation with Cleophas’ widow Sadie Williams–that depicts the esoteric world of a working waterfront and the challenges, achievements, and problems Williams faced as the first African American president of ILWU Local 10, a union known for its legacy of militancy and international solidarity. Although the ILWU as an organization was committed to equal opportunity and opposed to all forms of discrimination, Blacks in the ILWU still had to confront the scourge of systematic racism and white skin privilege. Cleophas has chronicled such occurrences in Local 10 with unabashed clarity, documenting his evolution from a rank-and-file member to becoming a leader responsible for carrying out the duties of an elected official.

One of Local 10’s strongest connections to the Tenderloin is that the union was one of the primary funders of the California Labor School, the radical worker’s school founded in the TL that strove to educate the “whole person” by offering a robust complement of humanities courses in tandem with classes on trade skills and organizing and is currently the subject of TLM’s special exhibit Education for Action. Many intellectual and artistic leaders and luminaries taught and attended classes at CLS, including Cleophas–in his writings he recalls being “compelled to attend a few sessions before we could get our books” (from the hiring hall). 

Clarence Thomas, image courtesy of the author.

This program is an incredible opportunity to survey this essential document of the Black experience in a prominent San Francisco union with a contemporary Black labor leader. Not only is Clarence Thomas a 3rd generation retired member of ILWU Local 10, he’s a past-secretary-treasurer and executive board member of the local, and he has led or been a part of many historical rank-and-file struggles and solidarity actions at the point of production. Thomas’ activism started in the late 1960s as a member of the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College and as a member of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. During his college days at San Francisco State, he was a part of the leadership of the longest student strike in American History which resulted in the establishment of the first Black Studies Department and School of Ethnic Studies in the country, and both still exist today. Clarence organized and led many courageous and rank-and-file actions, in particular the Million Worker March Movement in 2004, which called for workers to break away from the Democratic and Republican parties and organize independently mobilize. Thomas has organized multiple port shutdown actions, most recently mobilizing Local 10 for the 29 port stop work action commemorating Juneteenth 2020 to Stop Police Terror, End Systemic Racism and Stop Privatization of the Port of Oakland. In 2021, he published an anthology about the radical African American unionists of Local 10 called Mobilizing in Our Own Name: Million Worker March. Although he is retired from the waterfront, he is not retired from the struggle.