Walter Reuther was a leading figure in the American labor movement, serving as president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1946 to 1970. He was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, on September 1, 1907. His father, Valentine, worked as a brewer and taught his sons, Walter and Victor, the importance of union membership and social activism. At the age of nineteen, Reuther moved to Detroit and joined Ford Motor Company as a tool and die maker. Fired by Ford because of his campaign work for the Socialist Party, he traveled to the Soviet Union with his brother, where they trained employees at the Ford-Soviet joint venture facility in Gorky and observed Stalin’s rule firsthand.