Biography
Leon Bates was born in Carrollton, Missouri, to Werner Bates and Matilda (White) Bates. He attended the "Lincoln Institute" now Lincoln University of Missouri at Jefferson City, Missouri, for one year before moving to Detroit with relatives to seek work opportunities in the manufacturing plants during the boom years around the First World War. At the end of the war he remained in Detroit while his relatives returned to Carrollton. In Detroit he met and married Anna L. Perry; they had two children. In his own words he had many different jobs in the years between the World Wars, including cab driver, common laborer, and he even considered trying his hand at home-made liquor during Prohibition. However, his bootleg liquor-making thoughts were very short lived as he was convinced that every knock at the door would be the police. The Detroit Police Department had a very long and well-deserved reputation of police abuse and abusive tactics, and he had no desire to go to prison.
By 1935, Mr. Bates was working at the Briggs Manufacturing Company of Detroit, Michigan; a company founded in 1909 by Walter Briggs, Sr.. Walter Briggs, Sr. had worked his way up to Vice President of the B.F. Everitt Company (car body makers) in 1906. In 1909 he acquired the Everitt Company and incorporated it in to the newly formed Briggs Manufacturing Company. Briggs Manufacturing would later become one of the country's largest auto body manufacturers; supplying parts to Ford, Chrysler, Packard, Hudson Motors, Studebaker and many others. Briggs Manufacturing became a division of the Chrysler Corporation in 1956.
Read more about this topic: Leon Bates (American Labor Leader)
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