Thomas William "Teddy" Gleason (November 8, 1900 – December 24, 1992) was president of the International Longshoremen's Association from 1963 to 1987.
Coming from a family of longshoremen, he left school after the seventh grade and started working in the docks.
When wages were cut in 1931 in the wake of the Great Depression, Gleason and several co-workers were blacklisted for stopping work.
When he was blacklisted, he pushed a hand truck in a sugar factory during the day and he sold hot dogs on Coney Island at night.
When the Johnson Administration went back on this promise, Gleason led an eight-day-long dockworkers' boycott of the Soviet-bound wheat.