In Jan­u­ary of 2013, an obit­u­ary of Jer­ry Tuck­er, who died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer a year ago at age 73, char­ac­ter­ized the long­time labor activist as “the man who could have saved orga­nized labor.”

Tuck­er might have balked at the sug­ges­tion that he him­self could have been the sav­ior of orga­nized labor. He fer­vent­ly believed that work­ers could save them­selves — through demo­c­ra­t­ic, mil­i­tant union­ism led by rank-and-file mem­bers. Ear­li­er this month, Tucker’s vision was remem­bered and debat­ed in his home­town of St. Louis, Mo., as about 100 union­ists from through­out the coun­try gath­ered at the “Jer­ry Tuck­er: The Per­son, The Mis­sion, The Lega­cy” con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri-St. Louis. 

Read the article here.