John L. Lewis, an Iowan, fought for workers’ rights

The month of November marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, by an Iowan. You may not recognize that name itself, but you know it today as the AFL-CIO.

You also may not recognize the name John Lewis. But he is remembered as the founder of the organization and leader of one of its affiliated unions for 40 years.

This year, 2025, also marks the 90th anniversary of the Wagner Act, which created the National Labor Relations Board. It made news this year when the President Donald Trump attempted to dismantle it. A U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.declared the president’s actions “blatantly illegal.”

John Lewis, of Lucas, Iowa, would have fought for the board.

Lewis was born in 1880 as the son of Thomas Lewis, an immigrant from Wales who worked daily in the coal mines which were the dominant form of employment for the region in the late 19th and early 20th century.

John followed in his father’s footsteps, dropping out of school at the age of 15 to descend into the dark and dusty shafts underground and bring up tons of black bituminous coal.

In 1907, since Iowa’s coal had a high level of sulfur and was thus seen as less desirable, he left Iowa to labor in the coal mines of central Illinois. He immediately became an advocate for better working conditions and higher wages, and by 1910, was hired by Samuel Gompers as a District Agent for the American Federation of Labor.

By 1917, he was elected Vice President of the United Mine Workers of America, and as soon as the First World War ended, led the National Coal Mine Strike. Successful in gaining wage improvements, in 1920, he was chosen as President of the UMWA and brought its membership to more than a half million laborers.

With relative prosperity in the 1920s, pay was steady or increased, and the union was on its way to becoming the largest trade union in the United States. Lewis, throughout this time, meanwhile, maintained a loyal membership in the Republican Party.

But during the Great Depression up to 25% of eligible workers could not find a job. Lewis, seeing the Republican administration’s failed response, switched parties, and supported the rising Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt for president. Upon Roosevelt’s inauguration, Lewis then rallied the nation’s laborers so 92% of all coal miners were members of the union.

With that strong of political influence, two years later, in 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, making it illegal to deny employment because of union membership or to prevent employers from forming a union.

It also created the National Labor Relations Board appointed by the president and approved by the U.S. Senate. Its purpose was to provide an independent panel that heard grievances and offered advice on the legality of labor-related policy.

Emboldened by the act, Lewis attempted to bring the United Mine Workers into the American Federation of Labor. The leadership of the AFL, however, ultimately rejected them because they felt the AFL was only for skilled laborers who had mastered crafts in their profession and not unskilled labor.

Lewis had, in anticipation of being a part of the AFL, in November 1935, founded the Congress of Industrial Organizations to include unskilled laborers. As such, he led assembly line workers in the Great Sit Down Strike of 1936, gaining concessions from General Motors in Detroit, and helped orchestrate the “Little Strike” against U.S. Steel in Pennsylvania.

The president of the AFL, though, feared the strikes would cause backlash against higher skilled tradesmen, so the CIO was expelled from affiliation with it in 1937. This, however, did not slow Lewis, who, by 1940, had built CIO membership to 3.7 million workers, making it the largest trade union in the country.

World War II, however, changed the labor picture. When Roosevelt ran for a fourth term, Lewis, believing in term limits, did not back him as a candidate. When Roosevelt won, Lewis withdrew the UMWA from the CIO and established it as a separate entity with himself as its president.

Following the war, Congress then had a change of composition, and heart, and voted into effect the Taft Hartley Act, which stated workers who did not join unions could still benefit from any negotiations and benefits provided to the workers by the union’s collective bargaining.

The Iowa Legislature subsequently introduced Chapter 731 into the Iowa Code, enacting the Right to Work Act. No one could be compelled to join a union or denied benefits negotiated by a union if they chose not to join.

While it was considered a setback, 100,000 Iowa residents went on strike for a day and 50,000 rallied at the State Capitol with similar rallies in states across the country. In response, at the instigation of Lewis, medical and pension benefits were agreed upon by mine owners based on the tonnage of coal that was brought up from the mines.

With Lewis devoted to the miners, and the rancor for inclusion of all skilled or unskilled laborers having diminished, in 1955, the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged with the American Federation of Labor to become the AFL-CIO. Five years later, Lewis retired as President of the UMWA, and was celebrated as having improved the lives of labor more than anyone of his time.

He died nine years later at the age of 90 and was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Back in his hometown of Lucas, the John L. Lewis Museum of Mining and Labor, as well as the AFL-CIO, of which the UMWA is now an affiliate with chapters across the nation, work to keep his legacy alive.

His thoughtful and intellectual style still is needed, however, as the Federal Appeals Court recognized the NLRB as an independent, Congress-authorized, entity which cannot be obviated by the executive branch. But the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.