in 1942. Hillman remained in it, still the second most visible leader after Philip Murray, Lewis' successor. Jacob Potofsky, a fellow veteran of the Hart. Schaffner & Marx strike of 1910, succeeded Hillman upon his death in 1946. The Amalgamated continued to grow during the 1950s, crossing the 300,000 member threshold in 1951, but, like other garment unions, faced long-term pressures from the flight of unionized work to non-union manufacturers in the South and abroad. Mergers The ACWA had played a leading role in the funding and leadership of the Textile Workers Organizing Committee, an organization founded by the CIO in 1939 as part of its effort to organize the South. The TWOC, which later renamed itself the Textile Workers Union of America, grew to as many as 100,000 members in the 1940s, but made little headway organizing in the South in the decades that followed. In 1961, the International Glove Workers' Union of America merged into the ACWA. The ACWA merged with the TWUA in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Political activities The ACWA had been active in trying to form a labor party in the 1920s, combining some elements of the Socialist Party with supporters of La Follette. Hillman used the ACWA as a base, along with the ILGWU led by David Dubinsky, in founding the American Labor Party in 1936, an ostensibly independent party that served as a halfway house for Socialists and other leftists who wanted to support FDR's reelection but were not prepared to join the Democratic Party. Dubinsky later split from the Labor Party over personal and political differences with Hillman to found the Liberal Party of New York. ACWA represented strikers in The Farah Strike, 1972–1974. Leadership Presidents 1914: Sidney Hillman 1946: Jacob Potofsky 1972: Murray Finley Secretary-Treasurers 1914: Joseph Schlossberg 1940: Jacob Potofsky 1946: Frank Rosenblum 1972: Jack Sheinkman Co-Founding Vice Presidents Bessie Abramowitz Hillman August Bellanca Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca Joseph Catalanotti Louis Hollander See also Cooperative Village Jimmy Burke Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca Russian-American Industrial Corporation References Further reading Fraser, Steven, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993. Josephson, Matthew, Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor, New York: Doubleday & Company 1952. Lindsay, Debra. The Clothes Off Our Back: A History of ACTWU 459. Manitoba Labour History Series, Winnipeg: Manitoba Labour Education Centre, 1995. External links Guide to