34 Facts About Mike Quill

Michael Joseph "Red Mike" Quill was an Irish-American labor leader and politician who co-founded the Transport Workers Union of America, a union of subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit.

Mike Quill served as the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence.

Mike Quill served on the New York City Council from 1938 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1949 on the American Labor Party ticket.

Mike Quill was a personal friend of Robert F Wagner Jr.

Mike Quill died of a heart attack three days after the end of the strike.

Mike Quill's leadership is noted for his success in improving workers' rights and for his commitment to racial equality, before the Civil Rights Era.

Mike Quill was born in Gortloughera, near Kilgarvan, County Kerry, Ireland.

Mike Quill was a dispatch rider for the Irish Republican Army from 1919 to 1921 while still a teenager, then a volunteer of the Anti-Treaty IRA in the Irish Civil War that followed.

Mike Quill participated in fighting between Pro and Anti Treaty IRA units over the town of Kenmare in Kerry.

In New York City, Mike Quill first lived with family in Harlem.

Mike Quill worked odd jobs to make ends meet, including at one point bootlegging alcohol, as prohibition was still in effect.

The name that Mike Quill and others chose for their new union, the Transport Workers Union, was a tribute to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by Jim Larkin and Connolly twenty years earlier.

Mike Quill proved to have more leadership potential than O'Shea, and quickly replaced him in the top position.

Mike Quill was a persuasive speaker, willing to "soapbox" outside of IRT facilities for hours, and capable of great charm in individual conversations.

Mike Quill acquired some renown after an incident in 1936, in which some "beakies", the informants used by the IRT to spy on union activities, attacked Quill and five other unionists in a tunnel as they were returning from picketing the IRT's offices.

Mike Quill was closely associated with the Communist Party from the outset but proved rebellious as well.

Mike Quill denounced the plan vociferously, to the point that he was nearly expelled from the union.

Those few workers, such as Mike Quill, who were willing to accept identification as union activists, spread the word about the new union by handing out flyers and delivering soapbox speeches in front of company facilities.

Mike Quill shrugged off most of this criticism from outside, haranguing the Dies Committee when it attempted to question him, and disposed of his internal critics by bringing union charges against more than a hundred opponents.

Mike Quill had cooperated with La Guardia when Mike Quill successfully ran for City Council in 1937, as a candidate of the American Labor Party.

In 1940, both La Guardia and Mike Quill became bellicose opponents of each other, with Mike Quill calling a bus drivers' strike that served to demonstrate the union's power if challenged, while La Guardia came out in opposition to collective bargaining, the closed shop and the right to strike for public employees.

When William Z Foster, then the general secretary of the CPUSA, told him that the party was prepared to split the CIO to form a third federation and that he might be the logical choice for its leader, Quill decided to break his ties to the CP instead.

Mike Quill applied the same energy to his campaign to drive his former allies out of the union, that he had from the union's organizing drives of the 1930s.

In 1949, after a few inconclusive internal battles, Mike Quill prevailed, purging the officers who had opposed him, and much of the union's staff, down to its secretarial employees.

Mike Quill was the most vocal opponent within the CIO of its merger with the AFL, attacking it for "racism, racketeering and raids".

Mike Quill was a key supporter of Robert F Wagner, Jr.

Mike Quill had a longstanding distaste for racism and any other kind of discrimination.

In 1941, Mike Quill pledged to fight to see that 'the color-line is wiped out.

Mike Quill introduced King as "The man who is entrusted with the banner of American liberty that was taken from Lincoln when he was shot 95 years ago".

In July 1963, just prior to the March on Washington, Mike Quill told his union's membership that the battle for civil rights was the key question facing America.

Mike Quill was quite the admirer of Martin Luther King, whom he saw as a spiritual successor of Abraham Lincoln.

Mike Quill died at age 60, three days after the union's victory celebration.

Mike Quill had an initial heart attack when he was sent to jail for contempt.

Mike Quill spent his life ripping the chains of bondage off his fellow-man.