John Lewis, 1919-1971

Images document Lewis' years as head of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW), the Committee on Industrial Organizations, and later the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 1919 to 1969, as well as the unveiling of a bust of Lewis at the National Portrait Gallery in 1971. The images date primarily from the 1930s and 1940s. Most of the group images are of Lewis with major labor leaders, including Philip Murray, Sidney Hillman, George Meany, William Green, Frank Morrison, David Dubinsky, and Mike Quill. There are a few images of Lewis with political figures of the era, most notably Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, and of Lewis involved in merger discussions between the AFL and the CIO in the late 1940s, Lewis with author and activist Saul Alinsky, Lewis in meetings involving negotiations over coal industry disputes, and Lewis receiving a plaque from the National Negro Congress in 1940.