Labor / Civil rights & activism
Walter Reuther
1907–1970 · president of the United Auto Workers (1946–1970)
Tool-and-die maker who became the UAW's longest-serving president, building one of America's most powerful and progressive unions from Detroit.
- Born
Wheeling, West Virginia- Died
near Pellston, Michigan
aged 62- Birth name
- Walter Philip Reuther
- Detroit years
- 1927–1970
- Field
- Labor, Civil rights & activism
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Walter Reuther came to Detroit from Wheeling in 1927, aged 19, talked his way into a skilled tool-and-die job at Ford and studied at Detroit City College, today's Wayne State. After three years abroad, including a stint in a Soviet auto plant in Gorky, he returned in 1935 and threw himself into the young United Auto Workers. As president of west-side Local 174 he led, with his brother Victor, the December 1936 sit-down strike at Kelsey-Hayes, and on May 26, 1937, Ford's security men beat him on the overpass at the Rouge plant, a scene whose photographs shocked the nation. Elected UAW president in 1946, he survived a shotgun blast through his kitchen window in 1948 and in 1950 signed the Treaty of Detroit, a five-year GM contract that helped make autoworkers middle class. From Solidarity House he backed the civil rights movement, hosting Martin Luther King Jr. in Detroit in 1963, and co-founded the AFL-CIO. He died in a plane crash in northern Michigan in 1970.
Highlights
- President of the UAW, 1946–1970
- Beaten by Ford security at the Battle of the Overpass, May 26, 1937
- Negotiated the 1950 Treaty of Detroit with General Motors
- Survived a 1948 shotgun assassination attempt at his Detroit home
- Co-founded the AFL-CIO in 1955
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 4
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1951–1970
Solidarity House (UAW headquarters)
The UAW's riverfront headquarters, from which he led the union; he lent office space here to Martin Luther King Jr., who worked on an early version of his I Have a Dream speech in 1963.
Related place · 1937
Battle of the Overpass site, Ford Rouge Gate 4
Pedestrian overpass over Miller Road where Ford's Service Department beat Reuther and other UAW organizers on May 26, 1937; a rebuilt overpass stands at the gate today.
Memorial
Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Wayne State's Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, named after him and home to the UAW's records.
Memorial
Walter P. Reuther Freeway (I-696)
The east–west freeway across Detroit's northern suburbs is named in his honor.