Walter Reuther

Walter Philip Reuther ( born September 1, 1907 in Wheeling, West Virginia; † May 9, 1970 in Pellston, Michigan) was an American union leader. He gave the United Auto Workers Mobile mid-20th century great influence both in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party. He was a socialist and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Life

Reuther was set in 1927 at Ford and 1932 during the Great Depression dismissed. Together with his brother Victor, he traveled to Europe and from there to the Soviet Union, where he worked until 1935 in Gorky for GAZ. He returned back to the U.S., found employment at General Motors and became an active trade union member of the United Automobile Workers (UAW ). He organized several strikes and founded in 1947 together with Reinhold Niebuhr, John Kenneth Galbraith and others, the political organization Americans for Democratic Action.

In 1952 he was elected chairman of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. As a strong supporter of the American civil rights movement, he stood at the side of Martin Luther King when he his legendary speech I gave a dream.

He died in a plane crash landing at the Pellston Regional Airport.

1995 awarded him President Bill Clinton posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom.