1880-1969
President of the United Mine Workers

Leader.

John L. Lewis was the most controversial labor leader and perhaps the most controversial political leader of the 1940s. As a labor leader he brought industrial unionism to many workers who had been previously ignored by trade unions and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), forever changing organized labor in the United States. During the 1940s he did not join the government or the Democratic Party as the newly organized industrial workers and their leaders did, instead charting a different course as an independent. In doing so he became one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most vocal critics and a lone voice among labor leaders in opposition to the expansion of the federal government.

Individualist.

Lewis's background was different from those of many other labor leaders, who had often studied socialist and Marxist thought. In 1948 he said...