Leslie Orear

Lel Orear (1911-2014)  worked at Chicago's Armour & Co. plant in Union Stock Yards at a time when the idea of unions for blue-collar workers was spreading like wildfire. He quickly emerged as a voice for stockyard workers. The experience also became a doorway for Orear into a lifetime of labor activism, and ultimately a place as a spokesman and guardian of labor history. A co-founder of the Illinois Labor History Society, he fought to preserve the places, struggles, and words that have marked workers’ march towards progress.