Martin Ludlow

Martin Ludlow (born 1964) is president and CEO of Bridge Street, Inc., a Los Angeles-based live entertainment development company.

Ludlow served on the Los Angeles City Council, representing the 10th district from July 1, 2003, through June 30, 2005, when he resigned and was elected head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (County Fed).

In 2006, Ludlow resigned as head of the County Fed and pleaded guilty in state and federal courts to charges that he had used union workers and union money to help his 2003 city council campaign.

Ludlow was born in 1964 to a black father who served in the military and a white mother. He was placed in a foster home and named Marty. In 1965 he was adopted by a white couple, Willis Ludlow, a Methodist minister, and Anne Ludlow, a clerical worker; they renamed him Martin after Martin Luther King. He was brought up in Idaho Falls and Pocatello, Idaho. The elder Ludlow ran for Congress in 1972; he won the Democratic nomination but lost the election by a wide margin.

Martin Ludlow vividly recalls the rallies and picket lines and sitting in church pews with his father, who died in 1998. His own activism, he now realizes, stems largely from the man who adopted him. "My father did it partly because he was an underdog," Ludlow said.

The Ludlow family moved from Idaho to Washington, D.C., Syracuse, New York, and finally to Oberlin, Ohio, in 1976. He attended Ohio State University but did not graduate. He moved to California and attended Santa Monica City College, then became an intern for U.S. Representative Julian Dixon, after which he worked with at-risk youth in the Los Angeles Conservation Corps. He was a field representative for the Service Employees International Union.

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