John L. Lewis

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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.

Periodicals

• 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.

On-line

• "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.

Lewis, John Llewellyn, 1880-1969, American labor leader, b. Lucas co., Iowa; son of a Welsh immigrant coal miner. He became a miner and after 1906 rose through the union ranks to become president (1920) of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). Forceful and determined, Lewis fought vigorously to build up the union, won the loyalty of the miners, and thus consolidated his own power. He was one of the most important figures in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) until, moved by the desire to unionize the mass production industries, he split with the AFL and its leader, William Green. Taking several of the largest unions with him, Lewis founded (1935) a new organization, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO; see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations). He had supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt for President in 1932 and had welcomed the New Deal, but coolness developed between Lewis and Roosevelt, and in 1940 Lewis supported Wendell Willkie for the presidency and staked his CIO presidency on Willkie's victory. Roosevelt won, and Lewis resigned. Increasing antagonism between him and Philip Murray, the new head of the CIO, led to a break, and in 1942 the UMW withdrew from the CIO. Lewis kept his own power. During World War II, Lewis was faced with the hostility of the War Labor Board and with unfavorable public sentiment because of the many strikes of the coal miners in the "no-strike" period. Although these strikes may have helped to pave the way for antistrike legislation, they did win the demands of the miners. The UMW was again joined (1946) to the AFL but split off (1947) once more in a dispute over means of combating the restrictive Taft-Hartley Act. Lewis's failure to obey a federal court order to end a protracted coal strike led (1948) to a heavy fine for criminal contempt of court. In the 1950s Lewis discontinued his more aggressive tactics and followed a policy of accommodation with the depressed coal industry. He resigned as president of the UMW in 1960.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. A. Wechsler (1944, repr. 1972), S. Alinsky (1949, repr. 1970), R. H. Zieger (1988), and M. Dubofsky and T. Van (1989).

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.

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