In response, the biggest wave of strikes in United States history washed across the country in 1945 and 1946. Workers struck mass production industries and shut down several cities with general strikes. In the East, these occurred in Hartford and Stamford, Connecticut; Camden, New Jersey; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York. Citywide general strikes are rare in the United States: never before (or since) had so many occurred in one year. The cluster in 1946 demonstrated the widespread anger of workers at their unmet expectations and also the high level of organizational competence unions had built over the preceding years.

Across the bay from San Francisco, twenty-eight stores belonged to the antiunion Retail Merchants Association (RMA). During the fall of 1946, the RMA’s refusal to recognize a union in two stores set off a chain of events that led to a general strike of more than 100,000 workers from 142 AFL unions throughout Alameda County. In the process Oakland city politics, long dominated by conservative, antiunion forces, began a difficult makeover process, pushed by unions and their allies in minority communities. Although the Oakland General Strike of 1946 did not immediately achieve all of its objectives, its long-term effect was to give Oakland working people a substantial voice in running their municipal affairs for the first time.