Red Harbor

Brings to life Grays Harbor's fiery legacy of class conflict

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Grays Harbor was the Lumber Capital of the World. While thousands of lumber and maritime workers fought for higher wages and decent conditions, employers unified to protect their interests, often through violent and corrupt means. They spied on unionists, expelled them from their own towns, vilified them in the press, and physically assaulted labor activists. But with deep roots in their communities, radical workers continued to meet in their halls and immigrant neighborhoods—and to influence the wider labor movement well into the 1930s.

In Red Harbor, Aaron Goings resurrects the forgotten history of lumber workers in a bastion of labor radicalism, examining the conflict as workers faced down an alliance of employers, police, and violent anti-radicals, including the Ku Klux Klan. But he goes beyond these clashes to illuminate the vital roles of families, immigrants, and working-class women in the labor movement, revealing how people fought not only for labor rights but also for the good of their communities. The Industrial Workers of the World (or Wobblies) in particular adopted views and tactics from socialist Finnish immigrants while authoring programs responsive to local needs and supported by the people—radical and otherwise.

Vivid and revealing, Red Harbor shines a light on lumber workers and the pursuit of justice in the Pacific Northwest.

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Aaron Goings is professor of history at Peninsula College. His books include The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest, winner of the 2021 Sally and Ken Owens Book Award.

"A rich telling of an important place of working-class struggle. Grays Harbor was a mighty red site, indeed, carved out in sweat and blood. Using multi-lingual sources, Red Harbor resoundingly refutes the idea that community studies are overdone. Instead, it yields rich insights that inform our understanding of how radicalism was sustained across decades."—Rosemary Feurer, author of Against Labor: How U.S Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism