Origins & Early Life

John Llewellyn Lewis (February 12, 1880 – June 11, 1969) was an American leader of organized labor who served as the ninth president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960 and the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which organized millions of industrial workers during the Great Depression, from 1935 to 1940. Lewis was a major figure in the history of coal mining and the American labor movement; his supporters credited him with high wages, pensions, and medical benefits in the mining industry. Throughout his career in the public eye, Lewis was frequently caricatured and came to represent the broader American labor movement. Lewis was born to Welsh immigrants in 1880 and raised in Iowa, where he entered work in 1897 as a coal miner without a high school education.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

In 1906, he was elected as a delegate to the UMW national convention. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt at politics and business, Lewis returned to mining and was elected president of the UMW local in Panama, Illinois. In 1911, Samuel Gompers hired Lewis to work for the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as a full-time organizer. In 1919, Lewis led the first major union...

Enduring Legacy & Impact

The historical impact and works continue to influence the modern world.

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