In this file photo from August 1958 American labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, President of the Teamster’s Union, testified at a hearing investigating labor rackets. Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and no body has ever been found.
Keystone/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
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Keystone/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
His full name is James Riddle Hoffa. But everyone knew him as Jimmy. A labor leader who thrived in the rough and tumble world of union organizing, of contracts, and picket lines… and of standing up for workers right no matter what. When he disappeared it was front page news. But how many imagined we’d still be talking about that moment 50 years later with the basic question of “what happened?” still unanswered.
The day he disappeared — July 30, 1975 — Hoffa was 62 years old. By then he was a former Teamsters president — released from federal prison where he served time for bribery and focused on reclaiming his place atop the union. He pursued this goal while fully aware of his ongoing status as both a legendary figure in U.S. labor history and in American pop culture.
As a teenager in Detroit, Hoffa took to union organizing early on in the grocery business. He was smart and tough. With an emphasis on tough. A natural strategist, he knew how to pick his targets, organize strikes and boycotts, and he rose through the Teamster ranks earning the deep loyalty of truckers and warehouse workers in a city that was becoming an industrial powerhouse thanks to the automobile industry.
In 1957, Hoffa was named president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
It was a union that was already deeply involved in corrupt activities.
Hoffa negotiated important national contracts for truckers, even as he battled federal officials looking into union ties to organized crime.
