Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives
Previous Post: How too much tax talk could thwart Pritzker’s ‘fair tax’ push
Next Post: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Posted in:
* Over the weekend, I decided to re-read Gay Talese’s 1966 “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” essay for Esquire Magazine which sparked a new journalistic format. I re-read it every few years because it’s so phenomenal. As I was doing so, I came upon this passage…
Then after the last show at The Sands, the Sinatra crowd, which now numbered about twenty—and included Jilly, who had flown in from New York; Jimmy Cannon, Sinatra’s favorite sports columnist; Harold Gibbons, a Teamster official expected to take over if Hoffa goes to jail—all got into a line of cars and headed for another club. It was three o’clock. The night was young.
For some reason, Harold Gibbons’ name stood out to me, so I Googled him.
* From Wikipedia…
For a time, Gibbons was widely considered to be the heir apparent to Jimmy Hoffa. But Gibbons’ work and political stances landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents. Nixon’s Chief Counsel, Charles Colson, directed White House Counsel John Dean to initiate tax audits on Gibbons, but Dean did not follow through. Gibbons’ opposition to the Vietnam War led to Hoffa moving to marginalize him. Hoffa supported the war, while Gibbons had been a founder of Labor for Peace, and had visited Hanoi. Another source of friction was Bobby Kennedy, who had hounded Hoffa, and whom Gibbons had befriended. While Gibbons remained head of the Teamsters in St. Louis, he was maneuvered out of posts in which he could influence policy. […]
Gibbons’ papers are in the archives of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville which he was instrumental in founding, because Illinois union members who wished to pursue higher education had to make exhausting commutes to attend university in Carbondale.
*** UPDATE *** From Jeff Manuel at SIUE’s Department of Historical Studies…
Hi Rich,
I just wanted to share a brief comment in response to your post about Harold Gibbons and SIUE. If you (or any readers) are interested in digging deeper into Harold Gibbons, labor historian Robert Bussel wrote an excellent biography of Gibbons and Ernest Calloway a few years ago using the Gibbons papers in the SIUE archive. Calloway’s attempt, which ultimately failed, to unite the labor movement and the civil rights movement in the middle of the last century is a fantastic story that deserves more attention.
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/45gps3ym9780252039492.html
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 9:26 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
Previous Post: How too much tax talk could thwart Pritzker’s ‘fair tax’ push
Next Post: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org.
powered by WordPress.
This is great stuff. The stories and connections and the interwoven histories, those nuggets are at times better than the snippets we gloss over.
To the Post, specifically to this…
===Gibbons’ papers are in the archives of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville which he was instrumental in founding, because Illinois union members who wished to pursue higher education had to make exhausting commutes to attend university in Carbondale.===
Those willing to arbitrarily dismiss the importance, of not only the universities in this state, but the actual functions of necessity, like travel, and work… read up on why there are our great universities some wanted to starve into closure,
We need to not only remind ourselves why these schools are here, but why they are “here”… in Carbondale… or Charleston…
Comment by Oswego Willy Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 9:35 am
I was a law student at UIUC back during Vietnam, and when we “closed” the campus post-Cambodian invasion in the Spring of 1970. We had picket lines up around the union, and still recall Teamster drivers honoring the line. Gibbons was always a hero to me.
Comment by Mike Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 9:42 am
Great story. I can’t believe I have never heard that before.
Comment by Former State Employee Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 9:48 am
A fascinating example of the two fold nature of the Teamsters, originally founded by leftists, but in making a devil’s deal with the Mob for protection against employer strikebreaker goons, was in bed with organized crime through its funds for much of the time. Nevertheless, every so often, efforts to return the Teamsters to its original mission surfaced periodically, with varying levels of success.
Comment by VerySmallRocks Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 10:01 am
Fun fact
Now you need your special Capt. Fax dialing finger warmed up and ask for any summary/index, etc. of what is in those papers, whether there has have been an effort to digitize, can the docs be searched, etc.
See what other fun facts are in those boxes.
Comment by Annonin' Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 10:49 am
fun story. what is in those papers? who killed Hoffa?
Comment by Amalia Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 12:50 pm
“who killed Hoffa?”
Well, he’s… he’s, ah… probably pining for the fjords.
– MrJM
Comment by @misterjayem Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 1:29 pm
@misterjayem -
At the Red Fox restaurant the drink of the day was Norwegian Blue Pale Ale?
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 2:32 pm
Wow. I just learned a ton from this post, Rich.
Comment by West Sider Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 3:24 pm
Great post
Comment by Just a Citizen Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 4:01 pm
Per Bussel’s book, readers interested in the uniting of organized labor and the civil rights movement can find more terrific history in Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road, a long chronicle of the Memphis Public Works strike with some great discussion of how AFSCME’s local chapter worked with and independently of the national union in cooperation with Dr. King and local civil rights leaders.
Comment by Rich Hill Tuesday, Sep 3, 19 @ 8:59 pm