Police broke up a gathering of pickets-some estimates said five hundred-at the Luckenbach docks where black longshoremen were working. For the moment it spotlighted a potentially heated issue. In the past, black workers had been widely used as strikebreakers, only to be fired once the strike ended. In the 1919 long- shoremen's strike, black strikebreakers had been imported from and returned to New Orleans. At least two racially segregated gangs of black men worked during the Blue Book years. Early in the strike, an ILA strike bulletin warned that the shipowners were "circulating rumors that the ILA will not accept Negroes .... This is a deliberate and vicious lie." It would accept any worker who had worked in the area for at least one year. It pointed to a Negro delegate to the coastwide convention, five black members of the strike committee, and black members who "speak at all strike meeting[s]." Before the strike ended, the black gangs joined the walkout.