On November 23, 2025, the Sam and Esther Dolgoff Institute (SEDI) hosted historian Peter Cole for an expansive talk on Ben Fletcher, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the radical legacy of dockworkers’ internationalism—from Philadelphia’s segregated waterfronts to Durban, South Africa, and beyond.
Cole traced the rise of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union Local 8 under Fletcher’s leadership—the most racially integrated union of its time—and examined how dockworkers used their strategic position in global trade to fight both exploitation and racism. From the 1913 Philadelphia strike that forced employers to integrate the docks, to later IWW-led efforts that spread through the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa, Fletcher’s story becomes a lens on class power, solidarity, and the global movement of working people who turned the docks into engines of resistance.
The talk also moved across decades and continents, connecting the Wobblies’ militant syndicalism to later struggles: the ILWU’s desegregation on the U.S. West Coast, anti-apartheid solidarity actions in the 1980s, and the ongoing role of transport and logistics workers in opposing war and militarism today.
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University, research associate at the University of the Witwatersrand, and author of Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly and Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also co-editor of Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW, and a leading historian of labor internationalism, race, and radical unionism.
This event was part of SEDI’s ongoing speaker series, which brings together radical thinkers, historians, and organizers to deepen our understanding of the past and sharpen our interventions in the present.
The Sam and Esther Dolgoff Institute (SEDI):
https://www.dolgoffinstitute.com/
Explore Peter Cole’s work:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/peter-cole
