Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port - Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Review Quotes: "Thompson's meticulously researched book is an outstanding work of social history. His moving of urban workers from the periphery to the center of Charleston's story is a role model for discovering the lives of those often ignored in histories of the Old South. He describes brilliantly the activities and activism of black and white waterfront workers, indicating clearly the vital nature of their contribution to the antebellum southern economy. Ultimately, he highlights that to understand the successes of failures of post-Civil War Reconstruction one must begin in the fluid race and class relations of the pre-War era."--David Gleeson, professor of American history, Northumbria UniversityReview Quotes: "Meticulous research, lively writing, and balanced interpretations distinguish Michael Thompson's original and revealing history of Charleston's antebellum dockworkers, black and white, enslaved and free. At the intersection of Atlantic commerce and harvests of rice and cotton, the city's dock workers funneled goods, ideas, and hopes into and out of the antebellum South, as this fine work of historical craftsmanship discloses."--Michael P. Johnson, professor of history, Johns Hopkins UniversityPublisher Marketing: 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, South Carolina, 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 nineteenth-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.

Contributor Bio:  Thompson, Michael D Michael D. Thompson is a UC Foundation Assistant Professor of American History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He earned his B. A. in history from the University of Michigan and his M. A. and Ph. D. in history from Emory University. Thompson's manuscript for Working on the Dock of the Bay was awarded the 2011 Hines Prize from the College of Charleston's Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW). He resides in Ooltewah, Tennessee, with his wife, Melissa, and children, Benjamin and Lily.