CIO Files of John L. Lewis, Pt. II: CIO General Files on Microfilm
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Scope and Contents
The CIO general files (1935-1955) include correspondence, CIO personnel files, committee files, financial records, and convention files. Subjects covered include organizing drives in rubber, auto, steel, electronics, timbering and shipbuilding industries; the rift between the AFL and CIO; the development of the CIO national staff; national politics; communism in the CIO; competition between the CIO and the UMWA in organizing industrial unions; impact of Taft-Hartley Act; and AFL-CIO merger negotiations.
The United Mine Workers of America files regarding loans and financial aid to CIO unions and industrial unions (1922-1955) document a number of loans made by the UMWA to industrial unions and to the CIO itself. Of special interest are the files on the CIO and the Teamsters loans.
The CIO Field Office files (1937-1942) contain records both from the CIO field offices and from Industrial Union Councils. These files document the CIO's jurisdictional and factional disputes, political activities and organizing drives.
The AFL general files (1929-1955) comprise John L. Lewis's correspondence both with and about AFL officials. The material documents the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s and the formation of the CIO, and it provides information on the UMWA's reaffiliation and second disaffiliation from the AFL in 1946 and 1947, respectively. Files for later years provide valuable material on the AFL-CIO merger in 1955.
United Steelworkers of America (1949-1962) is a continuation of the Steelworkers files in part I. For the most part the series is a newsclipping file; however, there are records detailing the UMWA strike fund assistance to the steelworkers, and there is some material relative to the proposed federation of the UMWA, the steelworkers union, and the Teamsters in the 1950s.
Dates
- 1922-1962
Language of Materials
Collection material in English
Conditions Governing Access
Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.
Biographical / Historical
From its founding in 1935 until 1942, the history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was inseparable from that of John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Lewis created the CIO as an organization, and he used the manpower and treasury of the UMWA to keep the CIO alive. The early history of the CIO was also greatly influenced by the relationship between Lewis and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935, the CIO devoted the bulk of its assets and energies to Roosevelt's re-election campaign. Roosevelt's victory in 1936 set the stage for the CIO's triumph over General Motors and United States Steel in early 1937. As the Lewis-Roosevelt relationship began to cool in 1937, the CIO lost ground to the AFL, Lewis resigned as president of the CIO in 1940, and the UMWA left the CIO two years after that.
Extent
2.22 cubic feet
Abstract
This collection documents the origins and early history of the CIO as well as the dynamics of working-class militancy in the era of the Great Depression. The collection also provides a substantial amount of information concerning workers and trade unionism before the creation of the CIO and also after the UMWA's separation from the CIO in 1942.
Quantity:
20 microfilm reels
Forms of Material:
Articles, reports, pamphlets, correspondence, manuscripts, microfilm.
General
- Contact Information:
- Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Martin P. Catherwood Library 227 Ives Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183> kheel_center@cornell.edu http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel
- Compiled by:
- Kheel Staff, September 26, 2012
- EAD encoding:
- Randall Miles, April 21, 2014
- Title
- CIO Files of John L. Lewis, Pt. II: CIO General Files on Microfilm
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Compiled by Kheel Staff
- Date
- April 21, 2014
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
Revision Statements
- 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca NY 14853