Romance born out of radical politics
Pedigo describes meeting his wife. Both Pedigo and his wife, Jennie, worked at American Viscose during the 1930s; he did not become personally acquainted with her, however, until mid-decade when she gave a speech in support of inviting African American workers to union meetings. Following her speech, Pedigo began to work more closely with her and describes how they were both among the more radical members of the union and that as a result they became closer to one another. Throughout the interview he often describes how they worked together within the labor movement. Eventually, they were married in 1942.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Joseph D. Pedigo, April 2, 1975. Interview E-0011-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
She was in the plant, we weren't married until after she left
the plant. I was organizing in Danville, Virginia, Dan River Mills, at
the time that we got married. I think that the first time I ever noticed
her, she had been recording secretary of the local, but I never paid any
attention to her and then out of the clear sky one night, she got up and
started off with a long speech …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
… pointing out that there was no scientific difference between
Negroes and whites and at that time, we had a Jim Crow local, we had all
white and all black local.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
She was pushing for an integrated local?
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
She was pushing for … she wasn't going that far,
she was pushing to invite the Negroes to
attend our meeting. This was just out of the clear sky, she had done no
preliminary work, she didn't know a thing about local
politics and here she was sounding off, shooting the big guns to start
with and I was sitting right next to the most respected member of the
local, a fellow by the name of Lester Montgomery. Everybody respected
him highly and Lester would do anything that I told him to do. So, I
whispered to Lester, I said, "When she gets done talking, you
make a motion that we receive the delegation of Negroes and I will
second it." I got up and moved all the way across the room so
they wouldn't connect me with Lester's motion.
Well, when she got done, all hell broke loose. For a minute, there was
silence and Lester jumped up and made his motion and I seconded it and
then you would have thought that we had raped everybody's
mother. You never heard such a bedlam.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
This was '36?
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
This was '35 or '36, somewhere along in there. It
was a real knockdown, dragout fight. Of course, she got the hell beat
out of her, we all did, the maker of the mtion and myself and everybody
else was just howled all over the place. So, after the meeting, I walked
up to her and told her that I admired her nerve for putting that on the
floor, but, "By God, why didn't you get together
with somebody, if you were going to do it, and do a little advance
planning?" She was in tears, she didn't know what
she was supposed to do. I said, "Well look, for
Christ's sake, what we should have done was for somebody to
get up and make the motion that you made to start with and then you let
two or three other people make a speech and then you come up with that
long winded speech of yours after the opposition
has shot its wad, then maybe we would have a little chance of getting a
few votes. You killed yourself right to start with." Right
after that was when we decided to set up a group and start working and
we did shortly after that. We pulled our group together.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
You never had a name?
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
No. We were just a damn bunch of radicals, you know, and local ll, that
was the name we had.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
How big was the group?
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
We would have, I would say, twenty that would be about the maximum. It
would average around fifteen people a week. One time, we would meet in a
swimming pool in the summer time and another time out in a field and
they were often pleasant, social types of meetings. My wife was
recording secretary and in an extremely good position to have us know
what was going to happen because the local had agenda meetings a week
before, five days before the membership meetings. So, five days before
the membership meeting, we knew what was going to be on the agenda and
we knew what positions we wanted to take there, whether to put anything
on from the floor and so on.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
So, you were primarily concerned with the policy and strategy within the
local ll?
- JOSEPH PEDIGO:
-
Yes, right.