Thomas Greenwood (activist)
Thomas J. Greenwood was an Illinois labor and Indian affairs activist, of Scottish and Cherokee descent.
Greenwood worked as the manager of a shipyard during World War II and was noted for his hiring of Oklahoma Indians and women. After the war, he continued in leadership roles throughout the American Indian community, creating the Indian Service League of Chicago, which functioned as a social club. Greenwood represented Illinois Indians at the National Convention of American Indians in 1953 and helped influence national policies about American Indians as the Chairman of Ways and Means at the American Indian Chicago Conference in June, 1961.
He continued his activism by rallying against turning the Illinois-Michigan canal into a landfill and by advocating for a realistic pow-wow during the Tri-Centennial Marquette and Joliet Re-enactment.
Thomas Greenwood died in 1988 of lung cancer.
