John L. Lewis

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John L. Lewis, 1963 (credit: AP)

(born Feb. 12, 1880, near Lucas, Iowa, U.S. — died June 11, 1969, Washington, D.C.) U.S. labour leader. The son of Welsh immigrants, he became a coal miner at age 15. He rose through the ranks of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and from 1911 was also an organizer of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), with which the miners' union was affiliated. As president of the UMWA (1920 – 60), Lewis joined several other AFL union leaders in forming the Committee for Industrial Organization (1935) to organize workers in mass-production industries. On breaking with the AFL (see AFL-CIO), Lewis and other dissident union heads founded the Congress of Industrial Organizations. As its president (1936 – 40), Lewis presided over the often-violent struggle to introduce unionism into previously unorganized industries such as steel and automobiles. See also William Green; labour union; Philip Murray.

For more information on John Llewellyn Lewis, visit Britannica.com.

John Llewellyn Lewis (1880-1969) was one of the most powerful and controversial American labor leader of the 20th century. In founding the Congress of Industrial Organizations, he brought trade union organization to mass-production workers.

The American labor movement as it functions today owes much to John L. Lewis, who, along with his loyal disciples, seized the opportunity provided by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program to make trade unionism a force in national affairs.

John L. Lewis was born in Lucas, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1880, to Welsh immigrant parents. He grew up in a coal-mining and trade unionist family. After his father was black-listed for participating in a strike in 1882, the family moved about in constant search for work.

Life as a Miner

At the age of 15 John began work as a coal miner. Two years later he returned to Lucas, where he met his future wife, Myrta Bell. She influenced him to read avidly and widely, a habit that later produced the flowery phrases, Shakespearean quotations, and mixed metaphors of his famous public speeches.

A burly, adventurous young man, Lewis traveled to the West in 1901, where he worked as a miner in Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. He was in Wyoming in 1905 when a coal mine explosion killed 236 miners; this experience has been considered crucial in inspiring Lewis's devotion to miners' unionism and his passion for mine-safety legislation.

Early Career as a Union Official

In 1907 Lewis married Myrta Bell. In 1909 they moved to the heart of the southern Illinois coalfield, one of the key districts in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Aided by his five brothers who joined him there, Lewis gained control of the UMWA local. Following an Illinois mine disaster, the astute lobbying by which he achieved improved mine safety and workmen's-compensation legislation brought him recognition. As a result, Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), offered Lewis appointment as an AFL field representative and legislative agent.

Traveling on an AFL expense account, Lewis visited the important mining districts and ingratiated himself with local officials through generous use of AFL funds. Thus he was able to construct his own political machine within the UMWA. In 1916 he became the UMWA's chief statistician. A year later he was elected vice president; this, in effect, allowed him to run the union. In 1920, when Lewis became president of the UMWA, the union claimed 500,000 members.

Union President

Lewis's desire for power and the American environment of the 1920s would combine finally to undermine the UMWA's strength. Attempting to establish dictatorial control over the union, he alienated much of the membership as well as influential union leaders. This led to division of the union in Illinois and establishment of a dual miners' union. Lewis also negotiated agreements with employers that sacrificed jobs for the sake of higher wages. A Republican by belief and tradition, Lewis maintained a rather narrow social vision. When the Depression struck the country in 1929, his power had lessened greatly.

The CIO

The factors that hindered Lewis during the 1920s operated to his advantage in the 1930s. His lust for power allowed him to observe conditions that other labor leaders missed. Aware that the power of business had suffered from the Depression and the New Deal's more benign attitude toward unions, Lewis moved in 1933 and 1934 to rebuild the UMWA into a large and flourishing organization. He urged the AFL to organize and enroll mass-production workers into industrial unions. When the craft unionists who controlled the AFL refused to accept industrial unionism, Lewis challenged them by creating the Committee for Industrial Organizations (CIO) within the AFL in 1935. At the same time he resigned his AFL vice presidency.

Under Lewis's wise leadership the CIO proceeded to mount militant and well-financed organizing efforts in the automobile, steel, rubber, and other industries. In 1937, during protracted industrial conflicts, the CIO succeeded in bringing union organization and collective bargaining to the mass-production industries. Lewis remained a barrier against attempts to reunite the labor movement, however. In 1938 he transformed the CIO into a permanent competitor with the AFL.

Relations with Roosevelt

Successful in confrontations with the General Motors and United States Steel companies, Lewis took on President Roosevelt. Lewis had left the Republican party and turned New Dealer in 1936, providing the Democrats with a half million dollars in campaign funds. But when Roosevelt refused to heed his every demand, Lewis turned against him. In 1940 he opposed Roosevelt's reelection (allegedly because he had been denied second place on the ticket) and endorsed Wendell Willkie for the presidency. In a national radio speech, he called on workers to vote Republican and promised to resign as president of the CIO if Roosevelt won. When Roosevelt did win, Lewis resigned his presidency in 1941, though not without much drama.

Final Years

Lewis remained a thorn in the side of other labor leaders, employers, and public officials. Using what power he retained as UMWA president, he frequently called strikes in times of national emergency. This resulted in antilabor legislation and rising criticism of Lewis's behavior, though the miners' demands were usually fulfilled.

During his last years as president of the UMWA, Lewis returned to his 1920s strategies. Again, as Lewis traded jobs for higher wages and welfare benefits, his union shrank in membership and influence. He finally resigned his presidency in 1960. He died on June 11, 1969, in Washington.

Further Reading

There is no scholarly biography of Lewis, but three journalistic accounts of his life are available. The best of these, although laudatory and sometimes unreliable, is Saul Alinsky, John L. Lewis (1949). More critical are C. L. Sulzberger, Sit Down with John L. Lewis (1938), and James A. Wechsler, Labor Baron: A Portrait of John L. Lewis (1944). An interesting, revealing portrait is in the autobiography of another UMWA leader, John Brophy, A Miner's Life, edited by John O. P. Hall (1964). The works that best place Lewis in context of the 1920s and 1930s and critically assess his contributions are Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (1960) and Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (1970).

politician; civil rights activist

Personal Information

Born John Robert Lewis, February 21, 1940, in Troy, AL; son of Eddie and Willie Mae Lewis; married Lillian Miles, December 21, 1968; children: John Miles
Education: Attended American Baptist Seminary, 1957-58(?); Fisk University, BA, 1967.
Politics: Democrat.
Religion: Baptist.
Memberships:
Selected: Southern Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, cofounder, 1966; White House Conference on Civil Rights, member, 1966; Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, trustee; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); American Civil Liberties Union.

Career

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), cofounder, 1960, chairman, 1963-66; Field Foundation, New York City, associate director, 1966-67, Field Foundation Southern Regional Council, Nashville, TN, director of community organization projects, beginning 1967; Field Foundation Voter Education Project, Atlanta, GA, executive director, 1970-77; ACTION, director of domestic operations, 1977-80; Atlanta City Council member, 1982-86; U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, Democratic congressman from Fifth District of Georgia, 1986-; chief deputy whip, 1991-; Faith and Politics Institute, co-chairman, 1997-.

Life's Work

A Democratic congressman from Georgia since 1986, John Lewis is perhaps best known for his prominence in the U.S. civil rights movement. As a strict follower of nonviolent social protest, Lewis was a relentless organizer and participant in numerous sit-ins, freedom rides, and protest marches throughout the South in the tumultuous years of the 1960s. "There were a lot of people who pretended they were civil rights heroes," professor Roger Wilkins told Peter Applebome in the New York Times, but Lewis "was a true hero, an absolute hero, a man of absolute fearlessness and total integrity." For the first half of the 1960s, Lewis served as chairman of the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later worked as a grass-roots organizer for the Field Foundation and ACTION. He shifted to mainstream politics in the early 1980s, first serving on Atlanta's City Council and later as the representative from Georgia's Fifth Congressional District. As a government official, Lewis still champions the civil rights message he once carried into the streets of the deep South. "A lot of young people who came to Mississippi or Selma or the Freedom Rides thought you could come for a summer, a semester, a year, and create something new," Applebome quoted him as saying. "But most of us knew this is not a struggle that lasts one day or one week or one month or one lifetime."

Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr

Lewis was born in 1940 in Troy, Alabama, the son of parents who operated a cotton and peanut farm in rural Pike County. As a young boy, he displayed a religious intensity and single- mindedness that would later characterize his unswerving dedication to civil rights. With aspirations to become a minister, he regularly preached to the chickens on his parents' farm and also conducted baptisms for them. By the time he was a teenager--and despite a stammering voice and shyness--Lewis was a regular preacher in Baptist churches throughout the area. He became inspired in his ministerial pursuits by the weekly radio sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he listened to in the mid-1950s. The first person from his family to graduate from high school, Lewis moved at the age of seventeen to Nashville, Tennessee, where he began studies at the American Baptist Seminary. Lewis's first opportunity to meet King came in the late 1950s, when Lewis enlisted the help of the civil rights leader with his plans to gain admittance to all-white, segregated Troy State College in Alabama.

When those plans failed to materialize, Lewis returned to Nashville and enrolled at Fisk University to pursue a degree in philosophy. There, influenced by theories of nonviolent forms of social protest, as well as the burgeoning efforts of blacks to protest segregation laws throughout the South, he took up the cause of civil rights. He became a student and follower of the teachings of clergyman and activist James Lawson. In 1960, Lewis and several other Nashville blacks conducted their first "sit-ins" in the city's lunch counters, taking their place in "white-only" designated areas. Despite being repeatedly arrested by police and harassed by the community, Lewis and his comrades continued their protests throughout Nashville. Eventually they joined forces with leaders of similar student groups across the South to form what became known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Lewis--with an unwavering belief in civil rights and nonviolent protest, as well as a willingness to risk his own life--soon emerged as a foremost young leader of the civil rights movement. He was a frequent participant in the more dangerous forms of protest, including the so-called "freedom rides," which challenged racial discrimination in bus facilities throughout the South. Lewis, like other freedom riders, endured vicious physical beatings, death threats, and numerous arrests for the rides, which were predominantly conducted in the summer of 1961. Lewis also led much-publicized marches against segregated movie theaters in Nashville, again prompting numerous arrests as well as physical and verbal assaults by local whites. Lewis's staunch commitment to continue with such front-line protests--despite ever-present physical dangers--distinguished him as a role model of the early nonviolent protests. He was unanimously elected chairman of the SNCC in 1963 at the age of 23. That same year he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington, D.C., protest, making a noteworthy speech that criticized the administration of President John F. Kennedy for not proceeding quickly enough with legislation ensuring civil rights.

Refused to Give Up on Nonviolent Protests

As chairman of the SNCC, Lewis maintained a path of nonviolence toward achieving the goals of civil rights. Eventually, however, more militant elements of the organization--espousing principles of Black Power--began to grow restless with Lewis's leadership. In 1966, he was ousted as SNCC chairman by Stokely Carmichael, and shortly thereafter resigned. Lewis went on to work for the Field Foundation, first as a director of community organization projects in the Nashville area, and eventually becoming director of the foundation's Voter Education Project (VEP) based in Atlanta. As VEP director from 1970 until 1977, Lewis led grass roots efforts to organize southern black voters, to provide political education to young people, and to offer a variety of voter-assistance programs. In 1977, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be director of U.S. operations for ACTION, a federal agency that oversees various economic recovery programs on the community level. That same year, Lewis first ran for public office, finishing second in the Democratic primary for Georgia's Fifth Congressional District.

Wanting a more direct involvement with community groups, and critical of the federal government's efforts to aid the poor, Lewis became more involved in mainstream politics. In 1982, he was elected to the Atlanta City Council, a position in which he became known for his close attention to the needs of the poor and elderly. Lewis's popularity and respect among constituents became apparent in 1986, when he won a special run-off election for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Congress. Lewis's opponent for the Democratic nomination was black Georgia state senator Julian Bond, a close SNCC ally of Lewis during the early days of the civil rights movement. Pitting two prominent civil rights figures against each other, the race captured national attention and was marked by Bond's charges of Lewis's inarticulateness, as well as Lewis's contention of Bond's drug abuse. In the end, as political observers pointed out, Lewis's reputation as a diligent listener to the needs of black, elderly, and labor groups carried him past Bond and onto victory in the general election in November of 1986.

In his role as a U.S. congressman, Lewis has maintained a position as a prominent and respected figure who fights for civil rights in the United States. Some observers in the 1990s have argued, however, that he lacks effective strategies for adapting the movement to the current needs of blacks. In particular, Lewis was been criticized for his staunch support of the 1991 civil rights bill, which some Democrats and black leaders attacked as ineffective because of its failure to address the economic needs of blacks. However, Lewis possesses, as Applebome noted, "a sense of what is missing in the civil rights debate: a sense of shared purpose, of basic morality, that speaks to blacks and whites alike." In the fall of 1991, Lewis was appointed one of three chief deputy whips in the House of Representatives. According to Harold Ford, Jr., writing in Black Enterprise, "The move up positions Lewis...as one of the most influential members of the House."

Developed Power in Congress

Over the next decade, Lewis continued to increase his influence in Congress and worked hard to preserve civil and other rights of citizens. At a gathering on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the same spot that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now famous I Have a Dream speech, Lewis and other prominent civil rights leaders applauded the efforts of the hundreds of thousands of citizens whose protests helped to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lewis summed up their effort thusly: "I think it is fitting and appropriate for us to pause to celebrate the distance we've come and the progress we have made. Because of the actions of hundreds of our citizens, and because of the response of the U.S. Congress, President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, we have witnessed what I like to call a nonviolent revolution, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. And I say today, we are a better nation, and we are a better people," according to his office press release. Lewis published a memoir of his work during the civil rights movement in 1998 entitled Walking with the Wind. The book recorded his personal account of this volatile time in American history.

In his work in Congress, at the Faith and Politics Institute, and at schools and gatherings around the country, Lewis continues the work he started during the "nonviolent revolution" of the 1960s. In 2004, Lewis introduced a bill dubbed the "Civil Rights Act of 2004" by other congressmen, according to Jet. If passed, it would help to protect the civil rights of American workers. He noted in a press release in 2004 that the work of the civil rights movement is "far from done," adding that "There are doors that remain unopened and some that have slammed even harder shut." Lewis has committed his life to continuing the struggle for equal rights for all.

Awards

Selected:Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, 1998; Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-Violent Peace Prize; Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 1999; John R. Lewis Monument erected at foot of Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, 2004; John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage" Award, for lifetime achievement.

Works

Selected works

• (With Michael D'Orso) Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

• Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Simon and Schuster, 1988.

• Black Enterprise, November 1991.
• Christian Science Monitor, August 11, 1986; September 4, 1986.
• Ebony, November 1, 2003.
• Jet, May 8, 2000; October 2, 2000; August 11, 2003; March 1, 2004.
• New Republic, November 24, 1986; July 1, 1996.
• New Yorker, October 4, 1993.
• New York Times, July 6, 1991.
• Parade, February, 1996.
• Time, December 29, 1975; August 25, 1986.
• U.S. News and World Report, September 1, 2003.

• "Congressman John Lewis," http://www.house.gov/johnlewis/ (July 26, 2004).

— Michael E. Mueller and Sara Pendergast

(1880-1969), labor leader and president of the United Mine Workers (umw) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio). Born in Cleveland, Iowa, the son of Welsh immigrants, Lewis, between 1898 and 1907, tried coal mining, farming, construction work, and small business before settling in 1907 on a career in the labor movement. Joined by his family in the coal-mining community of Panama, Illinois, Lewis built a local power base among immigrant coal miners. He rose quickly within the trade union hierarchy and became a national organizer for the American Federation of Labor (afl) in 1909. In 1917 he returned to the umw as its statistician and editor.

As president of the umw, the largest trade union in the United States, during the 1920s, Lewis dominated a declining union in a sick industry. Admired by businesspeople and other Republicans (he served as chair of the Republican party's National Labor Committee), he won a reputation as a "labor statesman." To critics, however, Lewis appeared to be "merely a labor boss of the most conventional kind," an autocratic "per capita counter" and "power seeker."

During the 1930s, Lewis was the nation's most imaginative and creative labor leader. He joined the Democratic party in 1932, hoping that the national government would help stabilize industrial relations in the coal industry. Working closely with Franklin D. Roosevelt and other New Dealers, Lewis rebuilt the umw and successfully organized previously nonunion coal regions. When the afl failed to seize the opportunity to organize mass production workers, Lewis resigned his afl vice presidency and established the Committee for Industrial Organization (1935), which became the cio. After the Roosevelt landslide of 1936, the cio wrested union recognition and collective bargaining from the nation's two greatest mass production enterprises, General Motors and U.S. Steel. By 1937, Lewis had attained his greatest stature as a labor leader, but thereafter his power declined. Between 1937 and 1939, Lewis lost influence in the White House, and public sentiment turned against him. In 1940 he broke openly with Roosevelt because he felt that the president took labor for granted and that a Republican candidate elected with labor votes might repay the unions (and Lewis specifically). Lewis called upon workers to vote for Republican Wendell Willkie; when union voters rejected his advice, he resigned as president of the cio.

After 1940 Lewis's power flowed solely from his absolute control of the umw. In 1941, on the eve of America's entrance into World War II, Lewis took his miners out on strike, and in 1943, in the middle of the war, he again called them out. Those strikes won enormous gains for coal miners but further damaged Lewis's reputation with the public and fellow labor leaders. Not without cause did the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in 1943 damn Lewis's "coal-black soul." But Lewis seemed to relish the guerrilla war he was waging against other labor leaders, Congress, and the White House. Between 1945 and 1950 he led four national coal strikes, rejoined and impetuously left the afl, and fought aggressively against the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act.

After 1950, however, Lewis brought labor peace to a declining coal industry, steadily improved the material conditions of union members, and won esteem as an apostle of "cooperative capitalism." Lewis cooperated with mine operators because such cooperation stabilized the industry, increased union power, and guaranteed working miners high wages and greater fringe benefits. But Lewis's new brand of labor relations satisfied mine operators at the expense of miners who became the victims of technological change.

Lewis thus enjoyed great success and abysmal failure: he had served as "the great emancipator" for industrial workers during the 1930s and as their "great betrayer" for repudiating Roosevelt in 1940. A man whose life focused on accumulating power, he was that rare labor leader who left office voluntarily. In his own words, Lewis always behaved as "something of a man."

Bibliography:

Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (1986); Robert H. Zieger, John L. Lewis: Labor Leader (1987).

Author:

Melvyn Dubofsky

See also Congress of Industrial Organizations; Labor.

An American labor leader of the twentieth century. Lewis served for many years as president of the United Mine Workers and founded the Congress of Industrial Organizations (see AFL-CIO). Lewis supported the organization of unions by industries rather than by specific crafts.

For the mayor, see John L. Lewis (mayor of New Orleans).

John L. Lewis
Born	February 12, 1880(1880-02-12) Cleveland, Iowa, U.S.
Died	June 11, 1969 (aged 89) Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Miner; Labor leader
Known for	President, United Mine Workers of America

John Llewellyn Lewis (February 12, 1880 – June 11, 1969) was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960. He was a major player in the history of coal mining. He was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942, then back into the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1944.

Contents 1 Rise to Power 2 The 1950s 3 Retirement and Final Years 4 References in popular culture 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

Rise to Power

Lewis was born in Cleveland, Iowa, the son of Thomas H. Lewis and Ann Watkins Lewis, both of whom had immigrated from Wales. Cleveland was a company town built around a coal mine one mile east of Lucas.^[1] Lewis began working in the Big Hill Mine at Lucas as a teenager. He began working around the countryside as a "ten day miner" in the western United States. He moved to Panama, Illinois, and then to Springfield, Illinois, in 1910 with other members of his family. He joined the United Mine Workers and was eventually elected to the position of branch secretary. In 1911, Lewis began organizing for the AFL full time. After serving as statistician and then as vice-president for the UMWA, Lewis became that union's acting president in 1919. On November 1 of that year, he called the first major coal union strike, as 400,000 miners walked off their jobs. President Wilson obtained an injunction, which Lewis obeyed, telling the rank and file, "We cannot fight the Government.". In 1920 he was elected president of the UMWA. Lewis quickly asserted himself as a dominant figure in what was then the largest and most influential trade union in the country.

Lewis was considered by some a despotic leader of the Mine Workers: he expelled his political rivals within the UMWA, such as John Brophy, Alexander Howat and Adolph Germer. Communists in District 26 (Nova Scotia), including Canadian labor legend J.B. McLachlan, were banned from running for the union executive after a strike in 1923. McLachlan described him as "a traitor to the working class". Lewis nonetheless commanded great loyalty from many of his followers, even those he had exiled in the past.

A powerful speaker and strategist, Lewis used the nation's dependence on coal to increase the wages and improve the safety of miners, even during several severe recessions. He masterminded a five-month strike, ensuring that the increase in wages gained during World War I would not be lost. Lewis challenged Samuel Gompers, who had led the AFL for nearly forty years, for the Presidency of the AFL in 1921. William Green, one of his subordinates within the Mine Workers at the time, nominated him; William Hutcheson, the President of the Carpenters, supported him. Gompers won. Three years later, on Gompers' death, Green succeeded him as AFL President.

John L. Lewis (right, President of the United Mine Workers (UMW), confers with Thomas Kennedy (left), Secretary-Treasurer of the UMW, and Pery Tetlow (center), president of UMW District 17, at the War Labor Board conference of January 15, 1943, discussing the anthracite coal miners' strike.

In 1924, Lewis a Republican^[2], framed a plan for a three year contract between the UMWA and the coal operators, providing for a pay rate of $7.50 per day. President Coolidge and then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover were impressed with the plan and Lewis was actually offered the post of Secretary of Labor in Coolidge's cabinet. Lewis declined, a move he later regretted. Without government support, the contract talks failed and coal operators hired non-union miners. The UMWA treasury was drained, but Lewis was able to maintain the union and his position within it. He was successful in winning the 1925 anthracite miners' strike by his oratorical skills.

Historian C.L. Sulzberger later described the technique in a 1938 book called Sit Down with John L. Lewis, calling it the "Crust of Bread" speech. Operators who opposed a contract were often shamed into agreement by Lewis's accusations. A typical Lewis speech to operators would go, "Gentlemen, I speak to you for the miners' families... The little children are gathered around a bare table without anything to eat. They are not asking for a $100,000 yacht like yours, Mr.______..." (here, he would gesture with his cigar toward an operator), "...or for a Rolls Royce limousine like yours, Mr. _____..." (staring at another operator). They are asking only for a slim crust of bread.". With the full support of the AFL and the UMWA, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated and elected President in 1932, and Lewis benefited from the New Deal programs that followed. Thanks to the Wagner Act of 1935, labor union membership grew rapidly, especially in the UMWA. Lewis and the UMW were major backers of Roosevelt's reelection in 1936, and were firmly committed to the New Deal.

Lewis sent his best organizers into heavy industry in 1935-37, to organize the auto workers, the glass workers, the rubber workers and others. He supported the illegal sit-down strike (but did not use that tactic in the mines). When the AFL balked at organizing unskilled workers, Lewis withdrew his unions and formed a new organization, the CIO. By 1937-40 the CIO was spending as much time fighting the AFL as organizing, with the result that union political power was divided against itself. During the late-1930s struggle over the AFL's refusal to organize mass production workers, Green became the target of some of Lewis' most stinging attacks while Hutcheson was the recipient of a famous punch from Lewis that came to symbolize the dispute between the conservative AFL and the rebellious CIO.

In the Presidential election of 1940, Lewis, heavily dependent on pro-Soviet organizers, rejected Roosevelt and supported Wendell Willkie, a Republican candidate, fearing Roosevelt's intention for American involvement in World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the miners issued a no-strike pledge "for the duration" in support of the war effort. However, Lewis repeatedly violated the pledge, most notably in 1943 when half a million workers walked off the job. Public opinion was extremely angry and demanded new laws. President Roosevelt, a traditional ally of labor, felt he had no choice but to seize the mines. Even so, some steel mills closed for weeks and power shortages crippled production.

The 1950s

Lewis at a labor rally in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, meeting with mine workers.

In the 1950s, Lewis won periodic wage and benefit increases for miners and led the campaign for the first Federal Mine Safety Act in 1952. Lewis tried to impose some order on a declining industry through collective bargaining, maintaining standards for his members by insisting that small operators agree to contract terms that effectively put many of them out of business. Mechanization nonetheless eliminated many of the jobs in his industry while scattered non-union operations persisted.

Lewis continued to be as autocratic as ever within the UMWA: until the passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959, the UMWA had kept a number of its districts in trusteeship for decades, meaning that Lewis appointed union officers who otherwise would have been elected by the membership.

Lewis retired as president of the UMWA in 1960 and was succeeded as president by Thomas Kennedy until his death in, 1963, when he was succeeded by Lewis-anointed successor W. A. Boyle, who was just as dictatorial, but without any of Lewis' leadership skills or vision.^[3]

Retirement and Final Years

On September 14, 1964, four years after his retirement from the UMWA, Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson,^[4] his citation reading: "[An] eloquent spokesman of labor, [Lewis] has given voice to the aspirations of the industrial workers of the country and led the cause of free trade unions within a healthy system of free enterprise."

Lewis retired to his family home, the Lee-Fendall House in Alexandria, Virginia, where he had lived since 1937. He lived there until his death on June 11, 1969. He is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois.^[5]

References in popular culture

• In the 1938 motion picture Holiday the character of Linda Seton played by Katharine Hepburn describes how she tried to help some strikers in Jersey. "I never could decide whether I wanted to be Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale or John L. Lewis."^{[citation needed]}
• In an episode of the Jack Benny radio program, a friend brings a baby over to Benny's house. When the infant breaks a jar of home-made chili, Benny demands fifteen cents as compensation. When his friend protests by saying that he shouldn't have to pay because the baby is a minor. Benny retorts: "I don't care if he's John L. Lewis!" causing the audience to roar with laughter at the minor/miner play on words.^{[citation needed]}
• In another episode of the Jack Benny Radio Program from 21 January 1945, Mary complains that the hotel is so far underground that they are mining coal in the lobby, and the bellhops have lamps on their Helmets. Jack explains it by saying that the desk clerk's name in John L. Lewis.
• The seventh verse of the song "'31 Depression Blues," recorded by the New Lost City Ramblers and sung by Mike Seeger, includes the line "And the public said 'John L, it can never be done,' / But somehow he got the miners' battle won."^[6]
• In the second expansion Wrath of the Lich King from the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft there is an NPC that teaches mining named after Jonathan Lewis.

Notes

1. ^ History of Lucas County, Iowa, State Historical Co., Des Moines, 1881, page 611.
2. ^ http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/lewis.cfm
3. ^ http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/laborhall/1989_lewis.htm
4. ^ Presidential Medal of Freedom citation at www.medaloffreedom.com.
5. ^ John L. Lewis Grave at Find a Grave.
6. ^ http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/trackdetail.aspx?itemid=25151

References

• Alinsky, Saul. John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography. Reprint paperback ed. Vancouver, Wash.: Vintage Books, 1970. ISBN 0394708822 (Originally published in 1949.)
• Bernstein, Irving. The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941. Paperback edition. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1970. ISBN 039511778X (Originally published 1969.)
• Cantril, Hadley and Strunk, Mildred, eds. Public Opinion, 1935-1946. Princeton, N.J." Princeton University Press, 1951.
• Dubofsky, Warren and Van Tine, Warren. John L. Lewis: A Biography. Reprint ed. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Pages: 416 ISBN 980252012877; ISBN 081290673X.
• Galenson, Walter. The CIO Challenge to the AFL: A History of the American Labor Movement, 1935-1941. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960. ISBN 0674131509
• Zieger, Robert. The CIO, 1935-1955. Reprint ed. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN 0807846309

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John L. Lewis

Organized Labour portal

• Lewis's biography on the United Mine Workers of America's website
• Medium-length biography from a history site
• John L. Lewis Labor and the Nation, delivered 3 September 1937 in Washington D.C., American Rhetoric, top 100 Speeches, transcript of speech.
• John L. Lewis Museum of Mining and Labor in Lucas, Iowa
• John L. Lewis leading s strike in 1919.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John L. Lewis

Preceded by Frank Hayes	President, United Mine Workers of America 1920 - 1960	Succeeded by Thomas Kennedy
Preceded by none	President, Congress of Industrial Organizations 1936 - 1940	Succeeded by Philip Murray
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Franklin D. Roosevelt	Cover of Time Magazine 4 June 1923	Succeeded by Herbert L. Pratt

Persondata
NAME	Lewis, John Llewellyn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	U.S. labor leader
DATE OF BIRTH	February 12, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lucas, Iowa, United States
DATE OF DEATH	June 11, 1966
PLACE OF DEATH	Alexandria, Virginia, United States

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