For four decades, James R. "Jimmy" Hoffa helped forge one of the nation's strongest unions. As president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971, Hoffa became a household name synonymous with the new might of unions in the post-war era. Fairly or not, he also came to embody their legacy of corruption. Called before U. S. Senate hearings into union illegalities in 1957, he was questioned about his alleged ties to organized crime. Even as those hearings led to convictions of officials and federal reform of the union, Hoffa escaped prosecutors. Years of fruitless effort by the U.S. Department of Justice could not make any charges stick until, in 1964, he was convicted in an unrelated case and subsequently imprisoned from 1967 to 1971. Four years later, Hoffa's mysterious disappearance generated endless speculation about who killed him and why.
Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913, the second of four children. An occupational respiratory disease killed his father, a coal driller, when Hoffa was only seven. Quitting school after the ninth grade in order to help support his family, Hoffa went to work in a grocery warehouse. In 1930, the teenager organized a successful strike for better pay and working conditions, and he was soon noticed by leaders of the Teamsters Union, then in its third decade though yet to become a major force. Made a full-time organizer in 1932, he moved to Detroit and fought some of the union's violent battles: along with other picketers he endured beatings from the police and company strikebreakers determined to halt its progress. During the 1940s, as Hoffa helped to unite the loosely organized union, he rose in the leadership. In 1952, he won election as vice president of the International Teamsters and over the next decade won ground-breaking bargaining victories for the union.
Hoffa's successes stood in stark contrast to the picture of the union that emerged in the late 1950s. Beloved by the rank and file for allowing them to share in the era's prosperity, he also secretly had dealings for over a decade with members of organized crime. These contacts with mobsters--beginning with using one crime family to drive off a rival union--became public knowledge during hearings opened in 1957 by the conservative Arkansas Senator John Little McClellan. Exposing widespread union corruption, from larceny to embezzlement and income tax evasion, the hearings led to the subsequent prosecution of Teamster officials and even its president Dave Beck, whose resignation cleared the way for Hoffa's presidency. The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union, expelled the Teamsters, Congress passed stringent reforms, and decades of federal supervision over unions followed.
For several months, Hoffa faced intense questioning from committee members. Leading the charge were Senator John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the committee's chief counsel. Robert Kennedy in particular grilled Hoffa, declaring him to be the head of an evil conspiracy. Hoffa admitted no wrongdoing, and these skirmishes touched off a long feud. After 1962, as U.S. attorney general, Robert Kennedy devoted considerable Justice Department and FBI resources to convicting Hoffa, who continually eluded him. Yet even as he became the target of an ongoing criminal probe, Hoffa saw his power grow. Local union leaders asked him for authorization for strikes, and in 1964 he won the first national trucking contract for the Teamsters.
Although prosecutors never proved their case, Hoffa finally ran afoul of the law. Found guilty of jury tampering and of malfeasance, he began serving a thirteen-year sentence in 1967 in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. From his cell, he continued to run the Teamsters, although his grip on the union weakened in time. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon commuted his sentence: he went free in exchange for accepting a ten year moratorium on union activities. For years he struggled vainly, in court and in private, to reenter union politics.
On July 30, 1975, Hoffa disappeared under suspicious circumstances. He had arranged to meet a Teamster boss and reputed crime figure, Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, at a suburban Detroit restaurant. Hoffa never returned from the meeting, although his abandoned car was later found. FBI investigations proved inconclusive, leaving the mystery to be filled in by endless speculation. Some have contended that Hoffa was killed by the Mafia, others that his attempt to reenter union politics was fatal; and still others have linked him to the two Kennedy assassinations. For years everyone from comedians and crime writers to conspiracy theorists guessed at his whereabouts, but he has never been found.
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