Ah Quon McElrath
Ah Quon McElrath, born Ah Quon Leong on December 15, 1915, in Hawaii, was a significant figure in the labor movement and social activism in Hawaii. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she faced economic hardships from an early age after her father's death. Despite these challenges, McElrath excelled in her education, earning a sociology degree from the University of Hawaii in 1938, where she became involved in labor issues. She married Robert McElrath, an associate of labor organizer Jack Hall, and together they played vital roles in organizing workers across multiple ethnic backgrounds in Hawaii during and after World War II.
Her involvement with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was marked by her efforts during striking events, where she provided support services and advocated for workers' rights. After a long career with the ILWU, she retired in 1981 but continued to fight for social justice, including lobbying for health care reforms and civil rights. McElrath also contributed to education by helping establish an ethnic studies program at the University of Hawaii. She remained active in her community until her death on December 11, 2008, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneer for labor rights and social equity in Hawaii.
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Subject Terms
Ah Quon McElrath
Activist and social reformer
- Born: December 15, 1915
- Birthplace: Iwilei, Hawaii
- Died: December 11, 2008
- Place of death: Honolulu, Hawaii
Ah Quon McElrath was a prominent union organizer and social worker. She is identified with the mid-twentieth-century campaign of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to reform and democratize Hawaii’s exploitative social, economic, and political system.
Birth name: Ah Quon Leong
Areas of achievement: Activism, social issues
Early Life
Ah Quon McElrath was born Ah Quon Leong on December 15, 1915, at Iwilei on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Her parents were Chinese immigrants: Chew Leong, her father, came to Hawaii as a plantation laborer. Shee Wong Leong, her mother, was a picture bride. After her father died when she was five, McElrath, her mother, and her six siblings faced grim economic times. As a child, McElrath sold kiawe beans and dried bones to a local fertilizer company to help the family survive. When she was thirteen, she worked twelve-hour shifts in Hawaii’s pineapple canneries.
McElrath’s first language was Chinese, but she learned to speak, read, and write English. She became her intermediate school’s newspaper editor and, in the mid-1930s, a student at the University of Hawaii. Attracted to movements for social and economic justice and to antifascist politics, she joined the progressive Inter-Professional Association. McElrath worked at numerous odd jobs while a university student before graduating in 1938 with a degree in sociology. She became interested in labor issues and aided labor union organizer Jack Hall in his efforts to support Hawaii’s exploited sugar and pineapple plantation workers in the late 1930s. A few years later, Hall would embark upon his 1944–69 career as the ILWU’s regional director. One of McElrath’s pre–World War II contributions to the union was helping Hall edit his newspaper, the Voice of Labor.
Life’s Work
In August 1941, McElrath married Robert (“Bob”) McElrath, an associate of Hall’s who would succeed Hall as regional ILWU director in 1969. When union organizing was stifled by martial law in Hawaii after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, McElrath focused on working for the Hawaii Territorial Board of Public Welfare. In early 1943, she helped her husband organize the independent Marine, Engineering, and Dry Dock Workers Union of Hawaii.
During 1944 and 1945, martial law relaxed and the ILWU organized thousands of Filipinos, Japanese, and Hawaiians, along with other Asian, Hispanic, and European sugar and pineapple workers, into a united, multiethnic aggregation. In 1945, the members of the smaller Marine Engineering and Dry Dock Workers Union voted to affiliate with the ILWU. Bob McElrath was appointed Hawaii’s ILWU information director. The McElraths’ courage in organizing their independent union despite martial law had set an important precedent for the ILWU’s spectacular late-war unionization drive across all of Hawaii.
In 1946, when the ILWU’s 26,000 sugar workers went on strike, McElrath volunteered countless hours to the union cause. She counseled members about their social and economic needs and helped establish a soup kitchen that fed thousands. McElrath continued volunteering to aid the union during a pineapple industry lockout in 1947 and a major Hawaii longshore workers’ strike in 1949. She served as office manager for the union’s legal defense operation during the anticommunist Red Scare of the early 1950s, when Hall was indicted on charges of subversive activities in a politically motivated effort to undermine the militant ILWU.
In 1954, McElrath became an official social worker for the ILWU’s chapter known as Local 142. In a career that lasted until her retirement in 1981, she ensured that thousands of union members received the medical, dental, pension, and other benefits guaranteed by Local 142’s collective bargaining agreements. She also taught classes for union members and counseled them about resolving social welfare and family problems beyond the union’s contract.
In the political arena, McElrath backed the movement for Hawaiian statehood that succeeded in expanding democratic rights when Hawaii entered the union in 1959.She also lobbied the state legislature for improvements in laws covering a range of human services and helped to make public housing available to Hawaii’s low income and senior citizens. After her official retirement in 1981, McElrath continued to work vigorously for social and economic justice and for civil rights. She spent many more years lobbying the state legislature on behalf of the poor and elderly and helped found the ethnic studies program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She also became an advocate for universal health care coverage and for physician-assisted suicide.
McElrath was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii in 1995, serving until 2003,and was recognized as one of the university’s distinguished alumni in 2004.She was also a gifted public speaker, addressing ILWU conventions to thundering applause. McElrath passed away on December 11, 2008, shortly before her ninety-third birthday.
Significance
A progressive unionist and social activist for seventy years, McElrath was an important contributor to the economic and political changes that transformed Hawaii from a colonial outpost to a modern US state. In her later years, McElrath was revered by the ILWU as one of the union’s honored elders and great pioneers. She won numerous honors for her lifetime of efforts to improve social conditions for all Hawaiians.
Bibliography
McElrath, Ah Quon. “Agriculture: Hawaii.” Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU. By Harvey Schwartz. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2009. McElrath’s story in her own words.
---. “The Challenge Is Still There.” Rocking the Boat: Union Women’s Voices, 1915–1975. By Brigid O’Farrell and Joyce L. Kornbluh. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. Another McElrath oral history, featuring insights about women’s issues and industrial relations.
---. “Foreword.” A Spark Is Struck! Jack Hall and the ILWU in Hawaii. By Sanford Zalburg. Honolulu: Watermark, 2007. McElrath’s introduction to the reprint of a useful 1979 history.
---. “Organized Labor.” Autobiography of Protest in Hawaii. By Robert H. Mast and Anne B. Mast. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1996. A helpful interview with McElrath that emphasizes political activism.