Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor

Few have achieved more for the American worker than Lane Kirkland: fewer still have received less credit than Lane for their pivotal roles. In Lane Kirkland, political writer Arch Puddington traces one man's steady rise to the most powerful position in organized labor, a position many claimed, with only slight exaggerations, was more important than the presidency of the United States. 

Based on primary sources--including Kirkland's own unfinished history of the labor movement--this engrossing biography is the first work to track the lifelong journey of this champion for the American worker and crusader for workers worldwide. Puddington creates a vivid portrait of Kirkland's unusual life story, from the small, impoverished mill town of his boyhood, to the corridors of power in Washington D.C,, to a trade union congress in Gdansk, Poland. He skillfully recounts Kirkland's role in some of the thorniest issues faced by American labor and how, with tenacious leadership, he forged the disparate and often feuding unions of American labor--the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the United Mine Workers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union--into a unified and powerful political force. This meticulously researched biography also reveals how the positive transforming events of the New Deal in the South and Kirkland's enlistment in World War II shaped his lifelong political convictions that the United States possessed the strength and the wealth to expand freedom throughout the world and promote the welfare of its own people. This fierce commitment propelled him to the side of Polish Solidarity workers, where his steadfast support led to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. 

Brimming with forgotten morsels of history, Lane Kirkland explore how this New Dealer and Cold Warrior fought doggedly for measures that brought concrete benefits to ordinary working men and women. Kirkland left an imprint of practically every piece of significant social legislation from the 1950's onward, from Social Security and the laws that eliminated racial segregation to Medicare and health and safety legislation. Whatever the issue, Kirkland believed that the voice of working Americans should be heard through their representatives in the labor movement--and, for sixteen years, that voice was most often Kirkland's own.

From the Old South to the New Deal, from Washington D.C., to Poland, from World War II to Vietnam, Lane Kirkland provides a probing, insightful look into the events that shaped an unassuming young boy into the most eloquent and effective spokesman for workers worldwide.

"This book tells the story of one of the true heroes of the struggle for freedom from totalitarianism. Through the skillful use of the power he exercised as the leader of American labor, and through his own unshakeable commitment, Lane Kirkland played a crucial role in our peaceful revolution in Poland. He did much more. Throughout the world, millions of free people owe him a debt of gratitude for his service to the democratic cause. I am gratified that the full account of his indispensable contribution to freedom has finally been written." --Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarity and former president of Poland