Jimmy Hoffa
Identification: Labor leader
Born: February 13, 1913; Brazil, Indiana
Died: Unknown; disappeared on July 30, 1975; Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Significance: Hoffa revived the American labor movement but also became symbolic of corrupt union leadership. Head of the Teamsters union, he worked closely with members of organized crime. He also centralized union leadership, expanded organizing activities, and raised the wages of Teamsters while reducing competition from nonunion drivers.
Jimmy Hoffa began his career in Detroit as a warehouse freight handler for the Kroger food chain. By 1934, he was working full time as an organizer for the International Brotherhood ofTeamsters.Hebecame president of his local in 1937 and subsequently obtained help from Detroit gangsters to defeat trade union rivals. In 1946, Hoffa pleaded guilty to extorting small grocers in Detroit to purchase “permits” from the Teamsters to make deliveries with their own trucks. A 1955 Senate investigation into the Teamsters put Hoffa on television and made him a national figure. Hoffa became the Teamsters’ president in 1957. In 1967, he went to federal prison for jury tampering, fraud, and conspiracy in the disposition of union funds. President Richard M. Nixon pardoned Hoffa in 1971, with the provision that he keep out of union affairs until 1980.
Hoffa became one of the most famous missing persons in history when he vanished without a trace on July 30, 1975, after leaving a restaurant in Detroit. The general consensus among biographers is that Hoffa met with foul play, probably at the hands of underworld figures.
Caryn E. Neumann
Further Reading
Franco, Joseph, with RichardHammer. Hoffa’s Man: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa as Witnessed by His Strongest Arm. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1987.
Hoffa, James Riddle. TheTrials of Jimmy Hoffa: An Autobiography. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1970.
Witwer, David. Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
See also: Eugene V. Debs; Samuel Gompers; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; labor history.
