Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie and Jim Longhi singing to an interracial audience, possibly seamen in a National Maritime Union hall.

See this image and listen to the song “Talking Sailor (Talking Merchant Marine Blues)” in the Sailor Stories, Sailor Songs exhibit, the last of a series of exhibits celebrating the founding of the National Maritime Union and its extraordinary battle to break the color line on US ships in the 1930s.

Other exhibits in the series include, Why Unions? Art from the National Maritime Union, on graphic art from the period, Paul Robeson and the NMU, with songs from Paul Robeson, and Fighting Jim Crow on the High Seas, on the long haunting story of the Fall Strike that built the NMU.

Photograph from ciscohouston.com