About this episode
The episode explores the life and mysterious disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.
For weeks this show has lived in the corridors of power, among presidents and spies and the men who shaped the country from behind closed doors. This time we leave all of that behind and walk into a restaurant parking lot in suburban Detroit, where on a hot Wednesday afternoon in the summer of 1975, the most powerful labor leader in America climbed into a car and was never seen again. Jimmy Hoffa was a coal miner's son from Brazil, Indiana, who watched the company work his father to death and never forgot the lesson. He clawed his way off a Kroger loading dock, organized the Strawberry Boys, and built the International Brotherhood of Teamsters into the largest, most feared union in the country, more than two million members strong, with his hand on the wheel of the national economy. He could stop every truck in America with a phone call. He also climbed into bed with organized crime to do it, opened the door to the richest pension fund the Mafia ever got its hands on, tampered with a jury, and surrounded himself with the kind of men who eventually decided he was a problem worth solving permanently. The Depression picket lines and the broken bones. The war with Robert Kennedy and…
Topics covered
- labor leadership
- organized crime
- union history
- disappearance
- political power
Keywords
- Jimmy Hoffa
- labor leader
- Teamsters
- organized crime
- disappearance
- Robert Kennedy
- Tony Provenzano
- Nixon commutation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Places: Brazil, Indiana, Detroit
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