20-year-old striker Dick Parker was the first to perish in the great West Coast Maritime Strike of 1934, shot to death on the night of May 14-15 on the San Pedro docks as a picket line defended itself against assault by the LA Red Squad. John Knudsen who was also among the dozens of strikers shot in the melee, died later. Mariam Bonner attempts to find answers.
‘Who Murdered Dick Parker?’ by Miriam Bonner from Western Worker. Vol. 3 No. 22. May 28, 1934.
What happened in San Pedro on the night of May 14? A young worker, Dick Parker, was shot and instantly killed; fifty workers were wounded. Why? How? I have spent the past two days in San Pedro trying to get an answer to these questions. I have found many strikers willing to tell what they know, but only a few who will sign their names to their accounts; they are afraid of the blacklist.
Scabs had been brought into the region in cars and trucks. Police, the Los Angeles Red Squad, and plain-clothesmen had swarmed down to protect the scabs. On the night of May 14 the strikers determined to drive the scabs out of the stockade. I quote from one of the signed accounts:
WORKERS TELL STORY.
“We were about twenty yards from the road when the tear-gas bombs were thrown. The wind was in our favor, and blew the fumes toward the police force and the strikebreakers. I proceeded up towards the stockade, when, to my right, I noticed a uniformed policeman slugging a fellow-striker.
“I started over there but did not advance more than two steps when firing broke out, not by the fellow-workers but by un-uniformed policemen. No striker had any firearms. I noticed in particular two men dressed up in dark clothes, with light caps, one about 200 pounds, and one I recognized as Hache by his talk, his build, and his face. (Hache is the chief of the Red Squad in San Pedro. Ed.) He said ‘Get back, you son- of-a-‘. This was during the firing. Both of the men I mentioned were firing and had guns in their hands.
“All the uniformed city police had gats in their hands too. When the firing ceased I turned around and faced the fellow workers and hollered ‘They’re only using blanks’, and one of them said: ‘Blanks, Hell! Look here!’
“About fifteen feet to my right there was a fellow-worker down, and I should judge, three workers who proceeded to carry him to the road to transport him to a hospital.
“I heard the fellow-workers carrying him say ‘He’s got a couple in him already and he’s dead.’
“The firing started again, and the fellow-workers were running away from the fire hollering ‘They’ve got three more of us.’ In half a minute or so I heard someone hollering ‘Here comes the chief of police. He wants to talk to us.’ So I went up there and I saw Hynes. He tried to lead the fellow-workers to the highway away from the scene of action.” (Hynes is the chief of the Los Angeles Red Squad. Ed.)
Another striker told me this “I was within twenty feet of the ship when the firing started. When the shooting started they hit one of the longshoremen. I went to this man’s assistance and asked the plain-clothesman not to shoot any more because U wanted to help the man he’d already shot. Before I could discover who the man was, I was shot in the left leg. I could not tell whether the man who shot me was a Burns man or a Pinkerton man, but he was in civilian clothes.
“I heard one man who was near Dick Parker when he was killed say that Parker was about twenty feet from Hache. I saw something shining in Hache’s hand when he was scuffling. I can’t say in which hand the shiny object was, because he was swinging his hands in all directions. It looked to me as if it was in his left hand.”
Another worker told me that Hache is left-handed and that his club was in his right hand. What was in his left hand?
The general sentiment among the men I heard was that a man in civilian clothes did the shooting, but none of them would come out with the name of the man they suspected.
On the morning following the shooting, six strikers were taken to the police station. Some were charged with rioting, some with arson, some with assault. The Herald-Express for May 17 announced that the strikers have been released, and that Walter Hannefield, a former Los Angeles policeman and “special longshoreman” at Los Angeles harbor is held by police on suspicion of murder.
Who fired the shot that killed Dick Parker? WHO FIRED THE SHOTS THAT WOUNDER FIFTY STRIKERS? One mar told me that one of the wounded workers have five shots in him and that every shot was from a different rifle. Whether Hannefield or some other hired thug fired the fatal shot is not known now-it may ever be found out.
But longshoremen and seamen know this they know that the Red Squad, the police, and the plain-clothesmen have acted again as the hired murderers of the ship-owners, of the capitalist class.
Western Worker was the publication of the Communist Party in the western United States, focused on the Pacific Coast, from 1933 until 1937. Originally published twice monthly in San Francisco, it grew to a weekly, then a twice-weekly and then merged with the Party’s Daily Worker on the West Coast to form the People’s Daily World which published until 1957. Its issues contain a wealth of information on Communist activity and cultural events in the west of those years.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1934/v3-n19-22-may-1934.pdf
