EXCERPT - The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South
Written by SP Editor
The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South – David Griscom
The San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike
When the pecan shellers went on strike, they asked Emma Tenayuca to help. Her role with the Workers’ Alliance had proven to her community that she could be trusted; when it was time to strike, she was unanimously selected to lead, the crowd chanting her name: “Emma, Emma, Emma!”
On February 1, 1938, thousands of workers went on strike, walking off their jobs, and formed picket lines across 170 pecan shelling factories. Soon the strike would grow to include 10,000 workers. The strike would continue for three months, interfering with the peak season for pecan shelling. They were met with severe police resistance. The political establishment in San Antonio wanted the strike over and the police were happy to oblige. To justify their mass arrests, San Antonio police cited a rule that prevented the carrying of advertising signs without the permission of the City Marshal.26 There were also official complaints that the picketers were blocking sidewalk traffic, which was meant to justify the unjustifiable: Striking workers were beaten by police and firefighters armed with clubs for standing on the sidewalk. This seemingly minimal infraction came with a large fine for pecan shellers—$15—most of whom made less than $3 a week. Those who could not pay the fine were held in inhumane conditions. With little regard for human rights or dignity, the police stuffed eighteen people, side by side, into a jail cell designed for only four people. At another facility, two hundred and forty strikers were stuffed into a cell with a sixty-person capacity. When they cried in anguish, the police chief, Owen Kilday, sprayed “a fire hose into the cell.”
A district judge was confronted with a suit from the strikers, who rightfully argued the police were infringing upon their rights. Judge S.G. Tayloe ruled that the strikers had a right to picket but did not have a right to disobey the laws being arbitrarily enforced by the police. In addition to the police threats, the ruling elites used threats of deportation to try to quell striking workers. Emma Tenayuca noted how this was used during the 1933 cigar strike; a local politician had even claimed that “all he had to do was notify the immigration authorities and they would go to the picket line.” But the strikers persevered, and while the police crackdowns grew more violent, the workers had support from the community. Emma never wavered, with a keen focus on organizational details. While Emma Tenayuca was regularly present—and arrested—on the picket lines, she spent nights coordinating with other strike leaders about where to send people, encouraging and inspiring community members to show up in spite of the crackdowns, and ensuring that they were prepared for what would come. She was always sure to keep the workers at the center of the movement; after all, they were the ones with her also on the front lines. Years later, she modestly said of her pivotal role, “The only thing I did was organize these committees and send them down. The first thing was to prepare for a meeting and to keep the workers out [on strike].” Tenayuca is known as a hero, but she was not one to chase the spotlight.
The government saw this young 21-year-old as a significant threat. San Antonio Mayor C.K. Quin was particularly worried about Tenayuca’s influence, as was police chief Owen Kilday, who told Edwin A. Elliott, regional director of the then-new National Labor Relations Board, “If the strike is won under present leadership, 25,000 workers on the West Side [of San Antonio] would fall into the Communist Party.” Not wanting her leadership of the strike to divert attention from the workers’ demands, Tenayuca resigned as the leader. She was more interested in the strike’s success than in her position. Years later, she said of the leadership change, “We had not developed the leadership to take care of the negotiations … I knew that I was a good organizer … this was something else.” She may have stepped down as the leader, but she spent her time meeting with picket captains and drafting memorandums, the thankless work at the heart of organizing. Most days, she could still be found on the picket lines, inspiring those around her. As the labor leader Latane Lambert said of Tenayuca, “It was right she would be called La Pasionara because in her shrill little voice she would make your spine tingle.”
The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), under the leadership of Donald Henderson, took over the strike from Tenayuca, with her support. While San Antonio politicians and the police may have had their blanket suspicions of any union leader, it was not then known if he was a member of the Communist Party. But Henderson had, years before, tried to pressure H.L. Mitchell, founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, to join the party in secret. Despite the efforts of Police Chief Kilday, Henderson was able to get many pecan shellers to affiliate with the CIO. He refused to negotiate with city officials, instead demanding to speak directly with the company and representatives from the Department of Labor. The police chief continued to egregiously overstep his authority. The CIO had sent another organizer to San Antonio, J. Austin Beasley, whom Kilday immediately arrested, claiming he was wanted in El Paso. The justification was completely fabricated, but it was fitting for a police chief who said, when challenged by a union leader for his unconstitutional and anti-labor tactics, “It is my duty to interfere with revolution and communism is revolution.”
The gangster-like activity of the police chief garnered national and international attention, leading the Governor of Texas, James Allred (who also happens to be a distant relative of 2024 Senate candidate Colin Allred), to get involved. The governor got the union and the company to agree to arbitration, and the Texas Industrial Commission investigated the activities of the police chief, finding that he acted unlawfully.
Kilday and the police had not only bent the law to arrest strikers for picketing; they’d also shut down soup kitchens, hoping that hunger would force strikers back to work, and used the threat of deportations to force Mexican workers to return to work. But the workers of San Antonio held out, and the union negotiated a temporary compromise on wages of seven and eight cents, with the promise that negotiations would continue. When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, implementing a minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour, the pecan industry tried to organize a carve-out, claiming that their work was “agricultural” and should be exempted. The CIO supported the company, fearing that the change would otherwise result in job losses. In any case, the company brought back the machines to automate the work, and pecan shelling ceased to be a major employer in the city.
David Griscom (right) is a writer and political commentator with a focus on working-class politics and history, especially in the South and Texas, as well as host of the Jacobin Show. The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South is available from orbooks.com