On October 24, 1892, between 2,000 and 3,000 members of the Triple Alliance struck to win a 10-hour work day, overtime pay, and the preferential union shop. The Amalgamated Council wholeheartedly supported them.^[3]

The New Orleans Board of Trade, representing financial and commercial interests, appointed a committee to make decisions for the employers.^[3] The four main railways that served the city and the large cotton, sugar and rice commodity exchanges pledged their support for the Board of Trade. They helped raise a defense fund and asked the state governor to send in the militia to help break the strike. No negotiations took place during the first week.^{[citation needed]}

Employers utilized race-based appeals to try to divide the workers and turn the public against the strikers. The board of trade announced it would sign contracts agreeing to the terms—but only with the white-dominated Scalesmen and Packers unions. The Board of Trade refused to sign any contract with the black-dominated Teamsters.^[1] The Board of Trade and the city’s newspapers also began a campaign designed to create public hysteria. The newspapers ran lurid accounts of “mobs of brutal Negro strikers” rampaging through the streets, of African American unionists “beating up all who attempted to interfere with them,” and repeated accounts of crowds of blacks assaulting lone white men and women.^[4]

The striking workers refused to break ranks along racial lines. Large majorities of the Scalesmen and Packers unions passed resolutions affirming their commitment to stay out until the employers had signed a contract with the Teamsters on the same terms offered to other unions.^[1]

Source: wiki