John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.
Oak Ridge Cemetery is an American cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is a labor union founded in Marshall, Michigan, on 8 May 1863 as the Brotherhood of the Footboard. It was the first permanent trade organization for railroad workers in the US. A year later it was renamed the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The B of LE took its present name in 2004 when it became a division of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
John Marshall Hamilton was the 18th Governor of Illinois, serving from 1883 to 1885. Born in Union County, Ohio, Hamilton became interested in politics at a young age, joining the Wide Awakes when he was thirteen and the Union Army four years later. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University he studied law and was admitted to the bar. A notable attorney in Bloomington, Illinois, Hamilton was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1876. He served there until 1881, when he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois on a ticket with Shelby Moore Cullom. When Cullom resigned after election to the United States Senate, Hamilton became Governor of Illinois. He was not selected as a candidate for re-election, but did serve that year as a delegate to the 1884 Republican National Convention. He spent the rest of his life as an attorney in Chicago, where he died in 1905.
The Progressive Miners of America was a coal miners' union organized in 1932 in downstate Illinois. It was formed in response to a 1932 contract proposal negotiated by United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis, which reduced wages from a previous rate of $6.10 per day to $5.00 per day.
Jacob Samuel Potofsky was a Russian Empire-born American trade unionist, best known as second president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, succeeding founder Sidney Hillman.
John Phillip White was a miner and president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1911 to 1917.
The Lee–Fendall House is a historic house museum and garden located in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia at 614 Oronoco Street. Since its construction in 1785 the house has served as home to thirty-seven members of the Lee family (1785–1903), hundreds of convalescing Union soldiers (1863–1865), the prominent Downham family (1903–1937), the family of powerful labor leader John L. Lewis (1937–1969), and enslaved or free servants of those families.
Michael D. Ratchford was an Irish-American labor leader and president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1897 to 1898. Ratchford is remembered for his leadership of a coal strike during the summer of 1897, which lead to the establishment of a national scale of wages and hours for the industry.
Pullman National Historical Park is a historic district located in Chicago and was the first model, planned industrial community in the United States. The district had its origins in the manufacturing plans and organization of the Pullman Company and became one of the most well-known company towns in the United States, as well as the scene of the violent 1894 Pullman strike. It was built for George Pullman as a place to produce the famous Pullman sleeping cars.
The United Mine Workers of America Building is an historic building at 900 Fifteenth St. NW in the Downtown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Built in 1912 as the home of the University Club, a private social club, it was from 1936 to 1999 as the international headquarters of the United Mine Workers. Under the leadership of John L. Lewis, the union played a major role in improving working conditions and pay for a large number of mine workers, with Lewis eventually founding the Congress of Industrial Organizations to improve conditions for other types of laborers. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005. The upper floors of the building have been converted to residences.
John Mitchell was a United States labor leader and president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1898 to 1908.
The Pana riot, or Pana massacre, was a coal mining labor conflict and also a racial conflict that occurred on April 10, 1899, in Pana, Illinois, and resulted in the deaths of seven people. It was one of many similar labor conflicts in the coal mining regions of Illinois that occurred in 1898 and 1899.
Warren Stanford Stone was a railway worker who rose to head the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in the United States from 1903 to 1925. He was unusual as a labor leader in that he did not believe in compulsory union membership and was comfortable with "labor capitalism". He supported a radical plan in which workers in an industry would take one-third of the profits, the other thirds going to capital and the public. By the end of his tenure the Brotherhood controlled investments worth over $100 million.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
John Aylard Finch was an affluent English immigrant, businessman and philanthropist in the Inland Northwest region of the United States.
Max Zaritsky (1885–1959) was an American union leader of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union (UHCMW) as well as co-founder of both the American Labor Party and Liberal Party of New York State.
