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chose what later might have been called a Black nationalist tact by raising $10,000
from the Black community to form their own shipyard (thereby demonstrating the
depth of cross-class unity in that community). For a number of years, until its
failure in the depression years of the mid-1870s, the Chesapeake Marine Railway
and Dry Dock company was so successful that it employed not only 300 Black
workers, but a number of whites as well. This shipyard was not a unique
phenomenon, for Black bricklayers in Baltimore, reacting to their employers
attempts to cut wages after the Civil War, successfully ran their own brickyard for a
number of years. *

Black trade unionism was not, though, abandoned for Black enterprise. In
1869 a Maryland state labor convention for Black workers met, including
representatives of 23 crafts, pledging to organize against both employers and
against intrusions by white workers. In the Baltimore building trades, Black trade
unions of some strength subsequently developed, and in 1871 one of the first
successful Black longshore unions was founded. Also, in the post-Civil War years,
Blacks also organized with whites when the opportunities arose. In 1872 Black and
white draymen worked to set a scale of prices together, and Black caulkers were
represented on the predominantly white (and short-lived) Baltimore Workingmen's
Assembly. During the culminating march of the 8-hour movement in 1886,2000
Black and white bricklayers marched together. In the same years Black bricklayers,
wagoneers, stevedores, and grain trimmers organized lodges of the Knights of
Labor.52

Baltimore's Black labor movement in the post-Civil War period was
powerful enough to produced a leader of national stature, Baltimore-born caulker
Isaac Myers, who was involved in the leadership of all the major Black labor efforts
in the city during this period, including the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry
Dock. In 1869, Myers made the principle address on behalf of Black workers to the