Henry Hansen was the head of the JFK campaign for Coos and Curry County in 1959. He is pictured here John and Jackie Kennedy.
On October 8, Southwestern Oregon Community College (SWOCC) in Coos Bay dedicated its campus quad to Henry Hansen, the founder of the college, a longshoreman and the first Vice President of ILWU Local 12. The quad, named “Henry Hansen Labor Union Square,” will memorialize the role of Henry Hansen and the members of Local 12 whose tireless efforts and support led to the college’s creation. The quad will be a permanent monument to the working class origins of Southwestern Oregon Community College, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
ILWU Coast Committeeman, Leal Sundet, spoke at the event and spoke about the need to defend the middle class. “Unions and affordable public educations were the building blocks of the middle class,” said Sundet. “Unions and public education are under assault and the middle class is declining as a result.”
Former ILWU Local 12 Vice President and SWOCC alumni, Gary Alford, helped spearhead the effort to rename the campus quad after Hansen after he noticed that bust of Henry Hansen was displayed in an isolated part of the campus. The bust was relocated to the campus quad and unveiled during the dedication ceremony.
“Henry wanted a place for working class kids to have an affordable college education,” said former Local 12 Vice President, Mark
Hamlin, who also spoke at the event. “It wasn’t the Chamber of Commerce putting up the money for the campaign to create this college or circulating the petitions. It was the membership of ILWU Local 12 and other labor union members and their families who carried this college.”
Following the dedication there was a birthday party for Henry, who would have been 103 years old. To make this square possible, the college is selling legacy bricks that will be laid in the square so that everyone who attends the college will remember the efforts of the working men and women that made community colleges in Oregon a reality.
Henry Hansen: Growing up union
Henry Hansen was the son of a longshoreman. His father Enevold, was a charter member of Oregon’s first union, the Longshoreman’s Union of the Pacific. In 1915, at the age of seven, Henry experienced his first strike when the employers broke the Longshoreman’s Union of the Pacific.
Henry’s father, who had seen the worst days of abuse at the hands of employers and had always told him, “Don’t be a longshoreman.” But there weren’t a lot of other viable options for a young man in southwestern Oregon. Enevold invited Henry to partner with him on the waterfront hoping to discourage his son from following in his footsteps. That day Henry spent nine hours unloading 100 pound sacks of cement, earning $7.20 for his labor. That was the first day in Henry’s long shoring career but not
his longest— he later said the longest day he could remember working was 27 hours without a break before the 1934 strike.
A college for the community
Though Enevold didn’t succeed in discouraging his son from becoming a longshoreman, he did get Henry to think more about the idea of affordable, accessible education. Community colleges were a new idea in the early 1900s, and there weren’t any in the State of Oregon. Henry had read all about them and after a discussion with his high school teacher about how it could happen in Coos Bay, Henry was convinced; there should be a college for the community.
By 1932, Henry was working full time on the waterfront, but he never forgot about his idea to organize a community college. He belonged to the ILA and after 1934, helped form the ILWU. In 1937, as Vice President of ILWU Local 12, he formed committees to
further organize workers in the area. In October 1937, the Coos Bay Industrial Union Council was formed with Henry as the first president and the group began to organize mill and woodworkers into the C.I.O. That same month he presented a charter from Local 12 and installed ILWU Auxiliary No. 1.
‘Banging ears’ for community college
Henry attended the C.I.O. Constitutional Convention in Pittsburg along with Harry Bridges in 1938. Henry used the trip as a chance to talk to people about community colleges—or “banging ears” as he liked to call it. He stopped at a community college in South Dakota on the way home to talk with the students. He talked with people in his community when he got home to Coos Bay. He talked to soldiers from all over the US about the community colleges in their home states when he was serving in World War II. Henry talked, and the first people to listen were his union brothers in Local 12.
In 1957, Local 12 members assessed themselves $5 dollars a person, ($40 in today’s money), to send Henry to the statemlegislature to get a law passed authorizing community colleges. The feeling amongst the union brothers was that there was no reason why they shouldn’t or couldn’t have a college, and through that college would provide better opportunities for young people of the community.
Henry, the ILWU Local 12, the federated auxiliary, and a handful of other supporters faced a long, uphill battle to get Southwestern Oregon Community College on the ballot. After two injunctions from mysterious opponents, 5,000 petition signatures, another trip to the legislature to amend the law, they faced yet another hurdle—the law required petitioners post the cost of the election. Henry got the State Board of Education to set the cost at $1,000. Still a large sum of money in 1959, but at least it would not kill the movement. Henry went back to the Local with this figure, and they wrote a check, saying “Henry, we have
supported you this far, we are going all the way.” Through grassroots word-of-mouth campaigning among his labor and Democratic “underground,” as Henry called it, the college passed. In the fall of 1961, the first community college in Oregon—formed by a vote of the people— opened its doors.
Henry Hansen was the first chairman of the Board of Southwestern Oregon Community College. He applied the principles he learned in union organizing and campaigning to the community college: He never gave up; he always tried for something better, and made personal sacrifices. What Henry said in his oral history in Solidarity Stories, rings as true today as it did then, “If you don’t better the other guy’s condition and bring it up to your level, he’ll tear you down, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”
For more information or to purchase you own customized dedicated legacy brick, visit
SWOCC’s website: http://www.socc.edu/foundation/pgs/alumni
For more information about the dedication of the square visit http://happybirthdayhank.com/
–Peter Hansen contributed to this report.