A People's History of Sausalito

Located in the North Bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito was a bootlegging and rum running center during the time of prohibition.

During WWII it became a shipbuilding center. At that time Sausalito was the location of the African American Boilermakers strike. The boilermakers union did not allow non-whites to become members. The union and the shipbuilding companies had a closed-house shop, which meant that only union members were allowed to work on the ships. The all white union did allow a non-voting auxiliary to exist. Any African American workers wishing to work as Boilermakers were forced to join this auxiliary and pay dues to the union, without having a say in the union. Members of the auxiliary were paid lower wages and received less work.

In 1943 a few hundred African American boilermakers refused to pay dues to the union. This led to them losing their jobs. In response, the thousand other African American boilermakers walked off the job. In solidarity, the African American workers of the neighboring Richmond shipyards refused to pay dues to their equally segregated unions. The police were called in, but partially because of the importance of the shipbuilding industries to the war, the teargas and batons they held ready were not used. Rather four influential strikers and the company representatives had a meeting, where the company used patriotic sentiment to get the African American workers to return to the job. Following this meeting the four strikers addressed the crowd. Three of them urged their fellow workers to return to work. The fourth urged them to continue standing up for their rights. Some did return to work, others did not. Though under pressure from military and government leaders, neither the company nor the striking workers were willing to back down. Finally, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the workers against the company and the union. The judge issued a restraining order allowing all the workers to return to the job while the case went through the courts. The court case, known as James v. Marinship, made it all the way to the California Supreme Court where the court ruled that it is illegal for a closed-shop union to discriminate based on race.

Starting in the 1950s, artists, bohemians, hippies and others looking for alternative lifestyles began to move into boats off the Sausalito shores. Anchoring these boats in the bay meant a rent-free living situation. Soon a community formed. When new people arrived, the existing community members would help them drag a sunken boat out of the water and restore it to floating condition. Numerous creative ways were found to build floating houses. Some of the more well known individuals to live on these houseboats include Allen Ginsberg, Anais Nin, and Alan Watts. Bernardine Dohrn and other members of the Weather Underground organized and hid from authorities while living on a houseboat. Otis Redding wrote his famous song, "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" on a Sausalito houseboat.

All the while there existed a tension between those who lived in the city itself. Many were turned off by the alternative lifestyles of the boat squatters and viewed their homemade houseboats as an eyesore. As the demographics of Sausalito became wealthier, the houseboats were seen as bringing property values down.

By the 1970s this tension came to a head when the city police and the coast guard attempted to remove many of the houseboats for failing to comply with certain regulations. When the police came in attempting to board a certain vessel, community members would take their boats and attempt to block the authorities. Arrests were made. The police resorted to pulling their guns on people.

These kinds of evictions took place into the 1980s. In the end many of the houseboats were displaced or forced to sign leases and become regulated and legal living quarters. Today Sausalito is one of the most expensive cities to live in the Bay Area, and architect designed houseboats can sell for over a million dollars.