Title Working on the dock of the bay : labor and enterprise in an antebellum Southern port / Michael D. Thompson

Published Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, [2015] ©2015

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Description 1 online resource Contents Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One. "Using violent exercise in warm weather": The Waterfront Labor Experience and Environment -- Two. "This very troublesome business": Actions, Reactions, and the Pursuit of Mastery -- Three. "Improper assemblies & conspiracies": The Advantageous Enticements of Wharf Labor -- Four. "Laborers from abroad have come to take their places": The Racial and Ethnic Transformation of the Waterfront Workforce -- Five. "The unacclimated stranger should be positively prohibited": Comparative Disease Susceptibility and Waterfront Labor Competition -- Postscript -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z Summary Working on the Dock of the Bay explores the history of waterfront labor and laborers -- black and white, enslaved and free, native and immigrant -- in Charleston, SC, between the American Revolution and Civil War. Michael D. Thompson explains how a predominantly enslaved workforce laid the groundwork for the creation of a robust and effectual association of dockworkers, most of whom were black, shortly after emancipation. In revealing these wharf laborers' experiences, Thompson's book contextualizes the struggles of contemporary southern working people. Like their postbellum and present-day counterparts, stevedores and draymen laboring on the wharves and levees of antebellum cities -- whether in Charleston or New Orleans, New York or Boston, or elsewhere in the Atlantic World -- were indispensable to the flow of commodities into and out of these ports. Despite their large numbers and the key role that waterfront workers played in these cities' premechanized, labor-intensive commercial economies, too little is known about who these laborers were and the work they performed. Though scholars have explored the history of dockworkers in ports throughout the world, they have given little attention to waterfront laborers and dock work in the pre--Civil War American South or in any slave society. Aiming to remedy that deficiency, Thompson examines the complicated dynamics of race, class, and labor relations through the street-level experiences and perspectives of workingmen and sometimes workingwomen. Using this workers'-eye view of crucial events and developments, Working on the Dock of the Bay relocates waterfront workers and their activities from the margins of the past to the center of a new narrative, reframing their role from observers to critical actors in 19th century American history. Organized topically, this study is rooted in primary source evidence including census, tax, court and death records; city directories and ordinances; state statutes; wills; account books; newspapers; diaries; letters; and medical journals Analysis HISTORY / General History Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Stevedores -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- History -- 19th century African American stevedores -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- History -- 19th century Labor -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- History -- 19th century BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Labor. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Labor & Industrial Relations. HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century. African American stevedores Economic history Labor Race relations Social conditions Stevedores SUBJECT Charleston (S.C.) -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century Charleston (S.C.) -- Economic conditions -- 19th century Charleston (S.C.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century Subject South Carolina -- Charleston Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781611174755 1611174759 1611178576 9781611178579

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