Liberty Hill Site

In 1923 the Marine Transport Workers of the IWW struck the waterfront and stopped ninety ships, protesting wages, conditions, and the jailing of organizers under the state's criminal syndicalism law. Barred from public ground, strikers met on a private rise they named Liberty Hill. On May 15 Upton Sinclair stood up there and began reading the Bill of Rights aloud. Police arrested him before he finished and held him four days incommunicado. The strike was broken; the organizing it seeded came back in the 1930s.

What the plaque says

In 1923 the Marine Transport Industrial Workers Union 510, a branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), called a strike that immobilized 90 ships here in San Pedro. The Union protested low wages, bad working conditions, and imprisonment of union activists under California's criminal syndicalism law. Denied access to public property, strikers and supporters rallied here at this site they called "Liberty Hill." Writer Upton Sinclair was arrested for reading from the Bill of Rights to a large gathering. The strike failed but laid a foundation for success in the 1930s. The syndicalism law was ruled unconstitutional in 1968.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Monica Pier — 22 mi
  Where the Mother Road runs out of continent, and where the End of the Trail sign gives the drive somewhere to finish.
• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 27 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.

More markers nearby

• S.S. Catalina — 0.7 mi
• Timms' Point and Landing — 0.9 mi
• Site of Home of Diego Sepúlveda — 1.1 mi
• Casa de San Pedro — 1.4 mi