1975
The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle Hoffa (1913-75) was a working-class kid who got into the union-organizing business while working in a grocery store. By the time he was in his 20s he was working for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union of truckers and warehouse workers. As Hoffa rose through its ranks, he helped the Teamsters organize on a national basis and become one of the most powerful unions in America, able to disrupt the country’s transport of goods with strikes and boycotts. In order to do so, Hoffa and the Teamsters developed links with organized crime, which wanted to get its hands on the pension fund. He became union vice-president in 1952 and president in 1958, a position he held until 1971.
The corruption of the Teamsters was well-known to authorities in the government and labour circles. The union was expelled from the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for organized labour, and Attorney-General Robert Kennedy went after Hoffa and the Teamsters with a vengeance. He was convicted in 1964 of jury-tampering and fraud and served time in prison from 1967-71, though it was widely-believed he continued to control the union through stooges. He was released by President Nixon (some say in return for an exchange of money and guarantee of union support) but only on the condition that he refrain from Teamster activity until 1980.
Hoffa’s attempts to regain control of the Teamsters was resisted from many inside the union and may have disrupted plans by organized crime to work closely with those now in charge of the union. On the afternoon of July 30, 1975 he was scheduled to meet Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano, two Mafia bosses, at a restaurant in Detroit but he was never seen again. Though his body has never been recovered (its position was said to be under various highways, in various fields or beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey) the consensus is that he was murdered very soon after his disappearance. Hoffa’s son James has been president of the Teamsters since 1999.