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HTML-Encoded Finding Aid

Scope & Contents

The papers of Percy Llewellyn were placed in the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs in June of 1971 by Mr. Llewellyn and were opened for research in March of 1985.

Percy Llewellyn was born in 1905.  In 1932 he took a job at Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant were he became a union organizer.  He was among the Ford organizers beaten at the famous battle of the Miller Road Overpass in May of 1937.  In 1937 he became the first president of UAW Local 600 which represented all Ford River Rouge workers.  Dismissed by the company for his union activity, he was elected Vice-President in 1941 when Local 600 won complete recognition, and in 1943 was again elected President of Local600.  He also served in 1946 and 1947 at one time as Co-director of Region 1-A of the UAW and was chairman of the UAW-Ford National Negotiating Committee.

Identified with the union's left wing since the earliest organizing days, he was fired in 1952 by the international union as political action director for Local 600.  He went back to the Rouge plant but was later appointed to the unions staff as a pensioner's representative.  He retired in 1967, and he died in May of 1983.

In addition to his union activities Percy Llewellyn was active in various civic projects in Dearborn, Michigan where he lived and in 1957 was a candidate for the Dearborn City Council.

The papers of Mr. Llewellyn consist primarily of photocopies of newspaper clippings, correspondence, announcements and flyers relating to the factionalism in Local 600 during the forties and fifties and the differences between union leadership in Local 600 and the UAW. Some of the clippings relate to the attempted assassination of Walter Reuther in April of 1948.

Contents

Folder

         1.  Announcements, flyers, 1947-52

         2.  Clippings, 1938-1967

         3.  Correspondence, 1948-1967

         4.  Unionization of Ford Motor Company, 1932-1940, 

Finding Aid end