Stan Weir (academic)

Stan Weir (1921–2001) was an influential blue-collar intellectual, socialist, and labor leader. A rank-and-file worker for most of his life, Weir worked as a seaman in the Merchant Marine during World War II, as an auto worker, longshoreman, truck driver, and painter, before taking a position at the University of Illinois, where he taught courses to union locals. In the 1980s he co-founded Singlejack Books, a publishing house for worker writers. A close friend to James Baldwin, Staughton Lynd and C.L.R. James, Weir was at the forefront of much of the labor movement during the second half of the twentieth century.