Mini Biography of James Riddle Hoffa

Britannica Brief Encyclopedia: Jimmy Hoffa

(Born Feb. 14, 1913, Brazil, Ind., U.S. disappeared July 30, 1975, Bloomfield Hills, near Detroit, Mich.) U.S. labor leader. He moved with his family to Detroit in 1924, left school at 14, and began work as a stock boy and ware houseman  He became a labor organizer in the 1930's, developing in the Teamsters Union during the next two decades until he reached the office of president, which he held from 1957 to 1971. Known during the trucking industry as a tough bargainer, he played a key role in forging the first national freight-hauling agreement and helped make the Teamsters the heaviest labor union in the U.S. Long associated with underworld figures, he was sent to prison in 1967 for jury tampering, fraud, and conspiracy; his sentence was commuted by Pres. Richard Nixon in 1971. In 1975 he vanished from a restaurant near Detroit; he is believed to have been murdered to prevent his retaking control of the union. His son, James Riddle Hoffa, Jr. (b. 1941), was elected president of the Teamsters in 1999.

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Hoffa, James Riddle (hôf'ə), 1913-75?, U.S. labor leader, b. Brazil, Indiana. As a youth warehouseman he organized (1932) a union that was admitted two years later into the Teamsters Union. Hoffa rose swiftly in the Teamsters, in 1952 getting international vice president and in 1957 succeeding Dave Beck as president. Evidence of corruption in the union revealed by a Senate investigating commission in 1957 led to the expulsion from the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations of the Teamsters, which had been the federation's largest affiliate. Moreover, Hoffa was forced to consent a board of monitors to supervise his activities as Teamsters president.

Despite efforts from outside the union to remove him, Hoffa was reelected president by acclamation in 1961. In 1962 a federal grand jury charged him for accepting illegal payments from a Detroit trucking company; the case ended in a mistrial. Hoffa's power proceeded to grow, and by 1964 he was able to affect the trucking industry's first national contract. In the same year, however, he was convicted of jury tampering and of fraud in covering the union benefits fund, and was sentenced to a 13-year prison term. After all appeals had been exhausted, Hoffa began (1967) serving his sentence, but he held the Teamster presidency until 1971, when he resigned. In the same year, President Nixon commuted Hoffa's sentence, with the parole provision that he not engage in union action until 1980. After his release, Hoffa promoted prison reform. He disappeared in 1975 and is widely assumed to have been murdered.

Bibliography

See his autobiography, The Trials of Jimmy Hoffa (1970); W. Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa (1972); D. Moldea, The Hoffa Wars (1978); T. Russell, Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American Working Class (2001).

His son James Philip Hoffa, 1941-, b. Det refashioning roit, is a labor lawyer. He was narrowly defeated when he ran for the Teamster's presidency in 1996 but won the post in a 1998 contest and retained it in 2001...

Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: History: Hoffa, Jimmy

A labor leader who built the Teamsters Union into a powerful organization despite repeated charges of corruption. After his imprisonment from 1967 to 1971 for misuse of pension funds and jury tampering, Hoffa disappeared in 1975. It is widely assumed that he was murdered.