Jimmy Hoffa Biography
by Krysta CardinaleJimmy Hoffa was born on February 14, 1913 as James Riddle Hoffa. Despite what has been written and rumored about Jimmy Hoffa, it is undeniable that he is the man at the cornerstone of the modern labor union movement. At a time in the Depression-era 1930s when just alluding to unionization could put the jobs and very lives of workers in jeopardy, he fought for improved worker’s rights and negotiated national contracts for his Teamster members. The numbers soared to the millions thanks to Hoffa’s tough bargaining skills, charismatic personality and sympathy for the little guy.
The Jimmy Hoffa biography starts in Brazil, Indiana where he was born to a poor coal miner. Throughout his childhood he watched his mother work long hours as a domestic care taker. Jimmy’s father had died when he was seven from respiratory complications from years of toiling in the mines. When Hoffa was 11 years old he moved to Detroit, Illinois with his family. After this move, he watched his mother have to take in extra laundry jobs to make ends meet.
During the Depression, Jimmy Hoffa dropped out of high school a year shy of graduation. He had to help his family who, like most, was suffering financial hardship. He took a job as a stock boy at Kroger’s, a Detroit-area grocery store, where he quickly experienced the poor working conditions and low pay wages he watched his mother suffer. This turned out to be the catalyst that ignited his lifelong consciousness of workers rights.
Jimmy Hoffa became very well known for his touch negotiating skills. An early demonstration of these skills was when he orchestrated a strike at Kroger’s at the age of 17. After enlisting the support of four other workers, he walked off the job just as a large delivery of strawberries came into the store. Knowing that the berries would spoil in the heat, management reneged and negotiated a new union deal with the employees within an hour of the strike. Before the year was over, Jimmy Hoffa’s “Strawberry Boys” had also joined the worker union, Teamster Local 674, which later merged with Teamster Local 299.
Jimmy Hoffa Mafia
By 1933, Jimmy Hoffa was the business agent for Local 299. He transformed it from a 40-member unit with $400 to its name to a 5,000-member outfit worth more than $50,000. The 1930s were a volatile time for the worker’s rights movement and Hoffa’s life as a labor organizer was at times in danger. Thus Jimmy Hoffa assassinations began. His car was bombed, his office searched and he was once arrested 18 times in one day. In Jimmy’s words, “In those days…the cops would beat your brains out if you even got caught talking about unions.”
By 1940, Jimmy Hoffa was president of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters, and in 1952 he became the international vice president of the Teamsters Union under President Dave Beck.
In the 1950s, the U.S. government went on a manhunt against organized crime; they hit mobsters and their hangouts hard. Jimmy Hoffa never denied his involvement with the Mafia, he just never acknowledged it. In 1956, allegations surfaced that the Jimmy Hoffa Mafia, Teamster, was involved in illegal activities.
The Select Committee on Labor was led by a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy began his investigation, which sparked a lifelong dislike between Hoffa, a diehard Republican, and the Kennedy’s.
Kennedy’s brother Robert was chief counsel of the committee. He uncovered many financial irregularities attributed to Dave Beck, including the use of over $85,000 of union money for his own personal expenses and nearly $200,000 for renovations to his home. Beck was sentenced to five years in prison in 1957, pummeling Hoffa to the top spot.
The arrest of Beck was not enough to stop Kennedy in his quest to uncover the fraud he knew was lurking beneath the worker-championing shadows of the Teamsters. He turned his investigation to Jimmy Hoffa and eventually charged him with corruption in the misappropriation of over $9 million in union funds, and for entering in corrupt deals with employees. However, the jury in the trial did not agree, and found Hoffa not guilty. George Meany, head of the Teamsters’ largest affiliate the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) sided with Kennedy and threw Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters out of the association in 1957.
Hoffa was extremely popular with Teamsters. He earned a reputation as a tough and effective bargainer and was re-elected president of the union by a landslide in 1960. Coincidentally, this was the same year his nemesis John F. Kennedy became president of the United States.
After Kennedy won the election, he appointed his brother Robert attorney general, where he immediately resumed his investigation into Hoffa’s supposed shady dealings.
Hoffa was indicted for accepting illegal payments from a Detroit trucking company, and eventually charged with taking money from the Teamsters Pension Fund. The prosecution was able to get the testimony of a former union official, E.G. Partin, who provided evidence against Hoffa. Partin did this in exchange for leniency in a rape and murder case he was involved in. The hung jury voted 7-5 in favor of acquittal of Hoffa. The judge suspected Hoffa of jury tampering and called a mistrial.
In 1964, Jimmy Hoffa was found guilty of a second trial on charges of jury tampering and fraudulent handling of Teamster money. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. After exhausting his appeals, Jimmy entered prison and began serving his sentence in 1967.
In 1971, Jimmy Hoffa was granted a full pardon by President Richard Nixon. He was released from prison on the condition that he step down as Teamster president, a role he held onto during his years behind bars. It was later revealed that Nixon had received substantial campaign contributions from Teamsters, members of the Jimmy Hoffa mafia, in exchange for Hoffa’s release.
Jimmy Hoffa immediately upon his release he set about campaigning for prison reform. On July 30, 1975, after a business luncheon in Detroit, Hoffa mysteriously went missing and was declared legally dead in 1983.
Was there a Jimmy Hoffa Assassination?
It has been rumored that the assassination of JFK was a Jimmy Hoffa Kennedy Assassination. Hoffa supposedly conspired with, and hired various mobsters to assassinate Kennedy in 1963.
On the other hand, another theory states that there was a Jimmy Hoffa assassination. In this theory, he was apparently killed by the mob in order to prevent him from testifying in front of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Despite the rumors that surround his death, his influence on the modern labor landscape is unquestionable.
Where is the Jimmy Hoffa Body?
If there was a Jimmy Hoffa assassination, then where is his body? The determination of what exactly happened to Hoffa is still going on today. In 2001, DNA evidence proved that the “Jimmy Hoffa Body,” was in the car of a Teamster associate, Charles O’Brien. O’Brien stuck with the story that Hoffa was never in his car. The police were unable to come up with enough evidence to indict O’Brien on any charges.
In 2003, Richard Powell came forward with evidence about Hoffa’s disappearance. Powell, a convicted killer, told police there was a briefcase buried in the backyard of a house in Michigan. He said that in this case there was a syringe used to subdue Hoffa on the night of his disappearance. However, nothing was ever found. The FBI continued investigations on another Michigan house that Frank Sheeran, a WWII Vet frequently visited. Sheeran was also a Mafia hitman, truck driver, an official for the Teamsters, and a close friend of Hoffa. Once again no significant evidence was found.
The continued search for Jimmy Hoffa’s body has gone on in 2006. There have been several claims that different Mafia hitmen kidnapped, and then murdered Hoffa. There was also a search done in the middle of May, on a barn on what is now the Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township, Michigan. On May 24, 2006 the FBI removed this large barn to look underneath it for a body, but on May 30th the search ended with once again no results.
