James R. Hoffa Documentation collection

James R. Hoffa (1913- ) was an American labor union leader and former President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana in 1913. He left school at the age of 14 in 1927 and began full-time manual labor to help support his family. Hoffa had begun his career with the Teamsters as a union organizer in Detroit in the early 1930s, where he became president of Local 299. He was first elected Vice President in 1952 and later served as the union's General President from 1958 to 1971. He secured the first national agreement for teamsters' rates in 1964, and played a major role in the growth and development of the union, which eventually became the largest single union in the United States.

Prior to Hoffa’s election, the Teamsters and his predecessor, Dave Beck, had become the focus of a congressional investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, which was chaired by Senator McClellan from Arkansas. The chief counsel of the committee was Robert F. Kennedy. The investigations against the Teamsters and Hoffa continued throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Hoffa was repeatedly called to testify before the McClellan committee, which charged him with a wide range of improper and illegal activities, including use of union funds for personal purposes, corruption, and perjury. In 1964 Hoffa was convicted and began serving his sentences in federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

In 1971, President Nixon issued a conditional pardon for Hoffa, releasing him from prison under the condition that he remained inactive in union management. Hoffa then worked on a variety of issues, in including a campaign for prison reform, but retained a relatively low profile, while working on a comeback at the local level. On July 30, 1975, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in a Detroit suburb. He married Josephine Poszywak in 1936. The couple had two children: a daughter, Barbara Ann, and a son, James.