Goldberg, Arthur Joseph (1908-1990), served as secretary of labor, Supreme Court justice, and United States ambassador to the United Nations. President John F. Kennedy named him secretary of labor in January 1961, and appointed him to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1962. At the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Goldberg left the court in 1965 to become ambassador to the United Nations. He resigned as ambassador to the UN in 1968. In 1970, in his first attempt to win an elective office, Goldberg became the Democratic nominee for governor of New York. He lost to Republican Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Until 1961, Goldberg was noted mainly for his skill in mediating labor-management disputes. He became general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and of the United Steelworkers of America in 1948. He helped negotiate the merger of the CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955. Goldberg was born in Chicago on Aug. 8. 1908, and graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1929. He died on Jan. 19, 1990.
