H. James Yount was a prominent Kansas labor leader since the 1940s-1970s. The son of a Baptist minister, he was born in Bloomfield, Iowa in 1914, and grew up in small towns in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas. In 1942, after working as an aircraft mechanic, shipyard rigger, Oregon lumberjack, and in road construction, Yount took a job in a Kansas City aircraft plant. There he began work as a United Auto Workers organizer. By 1943, U.A.W. local 31 elected him as chairman of its Legislative and Political Action Committee. By 1944, Yount was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organization’s state affiliate, the Kansas State Industrial Union Council (KSICC), and in 1945, began over thirty years of work as a labor lobbyist in Topeka. After the merger of Kansas C.I.O. and American Federation of Labor groups in 1957, Yount was elected Vice President of the Kansas State Federation of Labor for the first of six terms. As a union official, Yount has been involved in Kansas political campaigns and labor issues since the 1940s. A published author, he has written a novel, Colored Water, as well as many articles for organized labor. He has also worked with state and local civic organizations ranging from the Salvation Army and UNESCO to the Kansas Park Authority.