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Weir, Stan (audio interview #1 of 6)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the first of six separate interview sessions with Stan Weir that were conducted over a period of several months. The life history project was initiated by Pat McCauley while he was a graduate student in history at CSULB. The location of the interview was not noted, but probably was in Weir's office in San Pedro. 11/2/1990
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- 2020-09-21
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- SUBJECT BIO - Stan Weir was a rank and file activist and organizer in the auto and longshore industries in California. Raised in Los Angeles, Weir attended UCLA briefly after graduating from high school in East Los Angeles. He joined the Merchant Marine when WWII began and his political education began on the first ship on which he sailed. His class consciousness and view of industrial unionism was heightened as he came into contact with the organized left through the Sailors Union of the Pacific. After the war, Weir worked in a variety of unionized jobs in both southern and northern California. He helped to foment a brief wildcat sit-down strike in the East Oakland Chevrolet plant. Beginning in the late 1950s, and for the next five years, his activism on behalf of other ILWU members who were classified as "B" workers eventually forced him out of the union. And despite the lawsuit against the ILWU that he filed along with other representatives of the "B" workers, he later resumed work on the docks in San Pedro. Weir remained an independent labor and socialist activist throughout the years, regardless of the particular jobs he held, and in the mid-1980s founded "Singlejack Books" in an effort to bring affordable "little books" to workers. Singlejack Solidarity, a collection of Weir's writing was published posthumously by University of Minnesota Press in 2004. The lengthy oral history with Stan Weir was conducted by Patrick McAuley while he was a graduate student at CSULB. A transcript prepared by Weir's wife, Mary, is on deposit at the Wayne State Labor Archive. The original recordings and accompanying summaries are on deposit in the Archive of California State University, Long Beach. TOPICS - early years; family relationships; early political leanings; mother's occupations; ethnic composition of neighborhood; effects of Depression; political education; Upton Sinclair and EPIC campaign in 1934; and elementary school;early education; Mexican gangs; curriculum scam; sports; UCLA; impact of Thomas Wolfe's books; heroes and role models; joining a socialist organization; basis of anti-war beliefs; and questioning religious beliefs;school attitude; encountering CP; Young Democratic Club; meeting Jerry Voorhees; cooperative movement in Compton; part-time jobs; Young People's Socialist League; questioning religious beliefs; Cadet Corps and Apprentice Seaman Training applications; first trip to South Pacific; becoming a seaman; relationships with sailors on ship; SUP and its history; learning seaman skills; gives up cadet training to become regular Merchant Marine; learning about the 1934 strike; and being nickname "Red" because of hair color;
- *** File: lhsweir1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-6:05)... Stan Weir was born in 1921 and lived on Alma Street in East Los Angeles with his mother, grandmother, and Uncle Stan. His English born mother was born in 1898 and immigrated via Canada in 1909 with siblings and parents. His parents separated when he was two months old and Weir saw his father for the first time when he was two years old. When Weir was eighteen, he located his father, who had changed his name to avoid child support. He owned a fair-sized appliance store in Napa. He bored Weir, who stayed only a few days. Weir saw him a couple of times during WWII, but they didn't get along. His father wanted desperately to introduce him as his son but couldn't because their names were different. (6:05-8:59)... Uncle Stan, his mother's prodigal brother, was some seventeen years older than Weir. They had the same name. Jobs were plentiful then, in the 1920s, and this handsome uncle worked as a Hollywood extra and had a job at a Libby's cannery. He would come home from Christmas parties with $20 gold pieces given as presents in ring cases. When the depression hit, Uncle Stan, who had no skills, was unemployed for seven to eight years. Weir describes him as a heavy drinker who made green beer and drank all day every day. Weir came home from school one day to what sounded like gunshots. It turned out to be exploding beer bottles, with the caps hitting grandmother's washtub. (8:59-13:15)... Weir's mother apprenticed in 1914 as a dressmaker, earning .50 cents/week felling. When a coworker died of consumption from felting dust, his mother quit and went to work as a dressmaker for the separated wife of William Le Baron, president of RKO (later Paramount Studios). She had an immense house at Hudson and Vine, with swimming pool, theater, and many servants. Seeing that, Weir first realized that there were really rich people in the world and he felt anger at such wealth. (13:15-14:45)... Weir describes going to the hideaway of his mother's employer. He and his mother would go by red car to Sierra Madre, hike to Camp Orchard, 3 1/2 miles up Mt. Wilson, stay two nights, and hike down. Once, when he was eight or nine, W. C. Fields picked him up in his Rolls Royce and took him to Le Baron's house. Weir describes Fields "extremely nice;" he gave young Stan his autograph, which Weir later gave to a WC buff. (14:45-20:40)... Weir describes Alma Street in the 1920s as a neighborhood of mainly small wood frame single-family houses with lawns, most of which were built 1905-1915. It was mostly English, Irish, Dutch, and German; no Blacks or Asians. People had lifetime jobs: milk truck drivers, telephone, gas, can companies, workers not managers. Weir never heard the word strike from anyone living on the street, but recalls an incident during the LA Railway (yellow car) strike in 1932. A man came into the sweet shop and launched a dramatic rationalization for being a scab. Weir didn't understand then, but the man's passion impressed him. The depression affected the neighborhood and many dust bowl families arrived with many children. One boy had never seen a toilet or toilet paper. Another's coat was covered with mucus from his constant cold, and he was starving: ate an overripe banana and almost the peel. (20:40-23:10)... Weir's Uncle George, the somewhat isolated middle child, was a catalyst for fun at family gatherings. He had many jobs until the 1930s, when he got a civil servant park department job and mowed lawns for thirty years at Point Fermin. He advised the children to get educated, get a good job and keep golf clubs in the trunk. And Weir's cousin Jack did just that. Weir's family's first car was a '28 Chevy which they bought in 1936, then a new '37 Plymouth for $700. (23:10-27:30)... Weir talks about some of the neighborhood women becoming prostitutes during the Depression. His uncle's steady girlfriend for years, was taken to Honolulu and became a prostitute. Ten years later she returned an old, really beat-up woman. Another neighbor woman was working out of her own house and had a pimp living with her, pretending to be her husband. Until he was a teenager, Weir never knew what she did, despite the steady stream of men coming and going. Weir recalls seeing a man walking down a street in a double parking zone with two shopping bags and wearing a sandwich board that said "Pick me up or I'll vote for Hoover." Home Relief impressed Weir in 1933. They would fill two shopping bags with fresh groceries and canned goods, and relief beef. There was always a line. His mother's job with the rich Mrs. LeBaron saved them from that. (27:30-30:44)... Weir's East Los Angeles neighborhood went for Upton Sinclair - End Poverty in California- in 1934, with signs in windows and stickers on cars. He is sure that his mother voted against him because she was not at all political. Neither were his uncles, who were racists. Weir recalls bringing a newspaper to his Uncle Stan once, with a story on famine in India and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. His uncle commended: "What difference does it make? They're all niggers anyway." Despite his childish innocence, Weir knew that was wrong, and it awakened him to racism. He didn't stop loving his uncle, but there was a reservation between them and also with his uncle George. End of tape. *** File: lhsweir2.mp3 (0:00-2:52)... Weir attended Eastman Elementary, just six blocks from home, and Stevenson Junior High, only four blocks away. Eastman was about 20 percent Armenian and 10 percent Mexican. Mexicans were a majority at Stevenson and he learned about racial, ethnic tension. Teachers tolerated Mexicans, who struggled with English. Weir recalls one teaching who intimidated and made fun of Mexicans. One day a big, husky kid stood up and told him: "My brother is big as you, and he will fight you after school." The teacher backed down in front of them, which was an eye opener for them all. (2:52-6:20)... During Weir's high school years in the mid 1930's, Mexicans and Anglos formed gangs. Mexicans would terrorize Anglos, surround one with knives and say how sharp they were. One leader, Tony Blanco, and Weir "went at it time after time." After WWII, Blanco retired from the army a Colonel. Another leader, Rooster, was just short of a Medal of Honor. He was shot in the face and was still in cosmetic surgery last time Weir saw him. Then they were big buddies. Weir came to understand Mexican gangs. Those junior high boys, in a strange country and having language problems, sensed during the depression that there was absolutely nothing ahead for them. Their resentment was so great they took it out in intimidation. But all that disappeared in high school. (6:20-10:00)... Weir's mother had access to LeBaron's (her employer) box, and so he went to the Hollywood Bowl, Philharmonic, and opera - even more than the woman did. This set him apart from his peers. The teachers recognized that he had middle class sophistication, and knew art forms even though he wasn't a horn-rimmed bookworm. Since nobody came home until 7 p.m., Weir played in the street. The big guys made him play baseball as second basemen, worked with him, and he became a competent player. Same thing with basketball. By the time he left Garfield High School he had grown from 5'1" to 6'2". All of this set a life pattern. He had one foot with tough guys and the other in this semi-intellectual cultural medium. (10:00-12:34)... Weir enumerates his heroes, including Charles Lindbergh, when he was six, Cotton Top Warburton, all American quarterback at USC, Ralph Zahn, basketball at USC, and Franklin Roosevelt. As yearbook editor, he wrote FDR for a dedication and when Steve Early sent a picture, Weir wrote an editorial. Because Roosevelt had promised no mother's son would fight in a foreign war, Weir said that we were closer to peace than at any time in a decade. A year later we were at war and Weir joined the only socialist organization of any size that opposed war by Washington or Moscow and was also anti-Hitler. (12:34-15:43)... Weir's anti-war position started in grammar school, where his mainly women teachers, who had had negative WWI experiences, were anti-war. One, who was a peroxide blonde who played the ukulele, told detailed daily stories about it being a phony war. That stuck with him. At UCLA, he was briefly a Beta Theta Pi pledge, and he recalls speakers coming to urge signing up. Weir said the last war was fought for profit. A big overweight Episcopalian priest with a big cigar said he'd rather die on the battlefield a free man than live under a despot. Weir blew up and told him that no one would draft him and no service would accept him if he volunteered. That ended fraternity life for him. (15:43-17:19)... Other experiences cemented Weir's anti-war position, like the next door neighbor who had been gassed and drank himself into blindness. At Sawtelle VA hospital every morning they'd bring out guys who'd been gassed and guys who'd been hit with mustard gas and were missing half a face. He looked at them with horror. (17:19-20:00)... Weir became a Christian Scientist until he read Mark Twain. He grew up going to the Grace Methodist Church in their neighborhood, but was turned off by the pastor who would yell and become apoplectic in sermons. Weir asked his mother if he could find a quiet church. He could ride a streetcar to the seventeen churches on Hope Street. He tried about four before finding Christian Science, the quietest. His mother joined, too. When he was fourteen, Weir began asking questions that the Sunday School teacher couldn't answer. Then he read Mark Twain's Christian Science, and that was the end. Christian Science was pro humanity, probably supported the war, but never to his recollection addressed the question of war. (20:00-22:56)... Weir talks about the "Revised Curriculum scam." In 7th grade, college eligible students were put without choice in an experimental curriculum: no math or English, instead how to set a table, which fork to use, manners. In high school it was renamed Revised Curriculum. He graduated in 1940 unsure of his future. Applications to several factories went unanswered. When he graduated, Weir was advised he would need 2 1/2 years at LA Junior College to get credits for college and had to get A's in courses. He went one semester but then went to UCLA with his records. (22:56-25:22)... UCLA revealed the truth, Weir says. The registrar looked at his papers, pulled his file from a cabinet and told him that he could attend UCLA as a regular student. They'd never been told, and there were others who wanted college but had been given the same 2 1/2 year story. He went to Garfield and confronted the vice-principal, who confessed that they acted on orders of the Los Angeles Board of Education not to tell. In fact, at graduation time, two counselors from UCLA told students "don't go to college, get a trade." (25:22-28:20)... At UCLA Weir found that the students from west side high schools were upper middle class and more sophisticated and way ahead of him. Garfield was working class. One teacher told him that is was Siberia for teachers. It was a conscious program to treat students differently based on the family income. Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights was an exception. It was a center of radicalism and home for urban, politically sophisticated Jews, who extracted west side treatment from the Board of Education. It sent as many young people to college as the west side, while Garfield sent only 3-5. He made a crusade of telling as many kids as he could, but if not for the GI bill, a lot of them would never have gotten a college education. (28:20-30:45)... Weir entered UCLA in the fall 1940, declaring Liberal Arts as his major. Thomas Wolfe's writing had a big effect on him. He notes that The Web and the Rock has as good and graphic description of a lynching as anything in American letters. Weir's mother said later that he went into a spell reading Wolfe, becoming non -communicative. Although Weir still believed in the school's system, by the eighth or ninth grade he was beginning to make changes in his own way. He became a member of the school Guard Force. End of tape. *** File: lhsweir3.mp3 (0:00-2:00)... When he was in the eighth of ninth grade, Weir was a Guard Force member, but after being given advice by a girl who sat next to him, he quit. Subsequently, he became cynical about school and his teachers began to feel that his conduct was threatening to school. About this time he took up socializing: dancing, big band jazz and basketball. These were his creative endeavors away from school. (2:00-3:56)... Weir encountered the Communist party after becoming involved with the Young Democrat Club through his best buddy. Weir met Jerry Voorhees, who he describes as a "flat out" liberal Democrat and Cooperative man. He was gerrymandered into a Republican district and lost the next election. [Editor's note: Voorhees lost to Nixon in 1946.] When Voorhees met Weir some thirty years later, he remembered him. Weir didn't know then what a communist was then. However, he recalls thinking that one of the women at the Young Democratic meetings who was making a big play for Voorhees was not sincere, that manipulation was going on there. (3:56-7:02)... Weir talks about The Cooperative movement, noting that it peaked in the Compton area. A Looking Backward movement (after Bellamy's book) that some abolitionist women had started in the late 1800s had became Production for Youth, a self-help cooperative. You'd go out in the fields and pick oranges all day and go home with the produce. The Nation estimated that half of Compton got 75 percent of their green groceries that way. Then it became an EPIC club. The Communist Party never tried to get into it, to his knowledge. (7:02-9:44)... Weir was a paper boy for LA Post and Record, Sunday Times and The Examiner, using a great red wagon. His main job, however, was four hours a day after school at a junk yard, taking apart electric and gas meters for the metal. He describes the job as "total misery." Each boy had six 55 gallon drums to fill. Some meters were better than others, and the six boys working there who were friends at school would have fist fights over the best ones. Each was paid in coin at the end of each day. (9:44-15:00)... Weir and his best friend (a Chicano) fantasized about escaping to South America. They saw war coming after the fall of France. Weir discusses some of his early experiences with sectarian politics. There was a large CP at Los Angeles Junior College (LAJC, later LACC) and also some Trotskyites. In his senior year at UCLA, he and another student were sent to a meeting at LAJC. The American Student Union (ASU) was splitting on CP issue and they were asked to vote against the CP. Weir told them that they had just arrived and didn't know the issues and couldn't be expected to vote, after which the meeting broke up. He believes that the school board was in on this with the SP. He also helped protest to the provost the refusal to allow Norman Thomas to speak on campus, noting that he did most of the talking. (15:00-18:36)... At UCLA Weir witnessed the CP in action. When students sang songs in 11:00 classes on "Football Fridays," the CP folks sang the "International." When he asked why and got double talk, he felt that "something was going on that the rest of us didn't know about." He was at UCLA three semesters, leaving during the Pearl Harbor semester. He recounts how a philosophy teacher was wiping out his belief in God. He didn't have anything to put in its place and was in crisis. (18:36-20:04)... Weir describes UCLA after Pearl Harbor as being like a mental institution, with young men running around in frenetically. Weir applied for Cadet Corps and also for apprentice seaman training. The latter called him first and he was sent to Port Hueneme. They didn't even have enough clothes: no jackets, just six pair of underwear and two shirts, all of which they wore at 5:00 on cold mornings. Before he finished training, he was called to Treasure Island for two months' training as a Merchant Marine Naval Reserve cadet. He made a long trip on South Pacific Lines, returning to the United States on January 11, 1943. (20:04-22:50)... Weir became a seaman. Seven of the crew on his ship were veterans of the 1934 general strike in San Francisco. They asked where he was in '34 (7th grade), in '37 (9th grade). They knew that they had a recruit and within a month he was eating in their mess, was in dungarees (instead off the khakis he'd been issued) and was no longer doing Cadet Corps studies. They taught him what happened in '34 as well as a variety of seaman skills. (22:50-24:59)... Weir found a loophole to allow him to be discharged, and went to the port agent of the Sailors Union of the Pacific (SUP) with a letter from the bos'n to give Red Weir a trip card. Weir's mother went into shock when he left Cadet Corps; to her it was working class kid making good, what college kids did. Had he stayed in he'd probably have become a skipper by war's end. His old friend, Garcia, went into the Navy, became a lieutenant, "went topside in attitude," becoming a right-winger, even though all his family in Spain had fought for the Loyalists. End of tape
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