Happy Birthday to labor movement leader Lane Kirkland (b. March 12, 1922, in Camden, SC), who was president of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995. At the helm of the most powerful union organization in the United States, he made clear from the start his firm commitment to labor unity. Growing up in the rural South during the New Deal, he came to see government intervention in the socio-economic lives of everyday people as vital to social functioning. Beyond this, as scholar Arch Puddington writes, “Kirkland believed that trade unions were a key—indeed, the key—institution of a democratic society. Whatever the issue—health care, arms control, tax policy—Kirkland insisted that the voice of working Americans be heard through their representatives in the labor movement.” He also forged significant unity for the movement. Puddington points out that “Within a few years [of assuming the AFL-CIO presidency], Kirkland had forged the disparate and often feuding unions of American labor into a unified and powerful political machine.”
Citations: Bernard Gotfryd, “Lane Kirkland, AFL-CIO president,” photograph (location unknown, c. 1980-1990), https://lccn.loc.gov/2020731645; Arch Puddington, Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 1-4, 6, https://archive.org/details/lanekirklandcham00arch.
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