Jerome Wurf

Jerome Jerry Wurf was a U.S. labor leader and president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from 1964 to 1981. Wurf was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., and was arrested multiple times for his activism, notably during the Memphis Sanitation Strike and was released just in time to hear Martin Luther King Jrs Ive Been to the Mountaintop oratory at the strike, assassination the next day, and attend his funeral.

Wurf was born in New York City in 1919. The son of immigrants from the AustroHungarian Empire, he developed polio at the age of four. As a young man growing up in Brighton Beach, he was inclined towards radicalism by his familys poverty and by communists he met. For some time he joined the Young Communist League he subsequently left it for the Young Peoples Socialist League. He was a critical of both groups, but preferred the YPSL due to his dislike of Soviet totalitarianism.

Source: Wikipedia