The history of African Americans in the
International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) in San Francisco is indeed worthy of  docu­­­men­tation. Such an individual is Cleophas Williams, whose
distinguished career as a member of the Local 10 spanned 38 years.
Cleophas Williams’ election as president of ILWU Local 10 in 1967, made him the highest elected African American to serve as an officer in the entire ILWU.
Born in rural Camden, Arkansas, and part of the Great Migration to the Bay Area, he arrived in Oakland, California, in 1942 – seeking to escape the horrors and multifaceted structures of systemic racism and white supremacy.
He was amongst the leaders who placed Local 10 into the vanguard of the labor movement by engaging in civil-rights
unionism and other social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Here is Cleophas Williams’ historic journey – his rise in Local 10 within the greater context of the Black liberation movement.