Pie in the Sky vs. Meat and Potatoes: The Case of Sun Ship's Yard No. 4

Abstract

In the spring of 1942, the Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company was gearing up for the most productive three years in its history. With the United States at war, the demand for transport ships would soon propel the Chester-based shipyard to a position of unmatched prominence in the industry – a remarkable development for a concern that was originally conceived as a support subsidiary for its parent, the Sun Oil Company. Twenty-six years earlier, Joseph N. Pew, the younger of two brothers who oversaw the fortunes of Sun Oil, had suggested the creation of a shipyard to build tankers needed to carry the products of Sun's Marcus Hook (Pa.) refinery. He and his older brother J. Howard acquired the old Merchant's Shipyard, hired cousin John G. Pew as president, and began building tankers.

By the end of 1943, Sun Ship boasted 35,000 employees, approximately half of whom were black. More than one third of the black employees worked in the company's No. 4 facility, a yard intended by the Pews to be staffed completely by black workers. Yard No. 4 presented blacks with another instance of a recurring dilemma: should they postpone the goal of full integration for the sake of economic improvement, or should they forgo the opportunity to improve their vocational expertise and economic condition for the ultimate goal of total equality in a fully integrated society? Such a goal seemed, on the eve of the Second World War, nearly as remote as it had been at the close of the Civil War. Jim Crow ruled throughout the South. The North lacked Jim Crow laws, but discrimination and segregation were the norm rather than the exception. “What have Negroes to fight for?” A. Philip Randolph demanded in 1942. “If you haven't got democracy yourself, how can you carry it to somebody else?”