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Oral History Interview with Harriet Herring, February 5, 1976. Interview G-0027. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    Harriet Herring, a research associate at the Institute for Research in Social Science and professor in the sociology department at the University of North Carolina, recalls her early life and experiences studying labor in North Carolina mill towns in the first half of the twentieth century. The bulk of the interview focuses on Herring's efforts to study the high turnover at cotton mills and the industry's resistance to her investigations. Some recollections about Herring's family and eminent sociologist Howard T. Odum might also be useful for researchers.
    Excerpts
  • Remembering a farm childhood
  • Black and white tenant farmers do not mix
  • Working in a factory
  • Human dynamics of mill village
  • Educating rural women in infant care
  • Southern mill is a better place to work than northern mill
  • Tenant farmers are not too promising
  • Violence stunts union organizing efforts
  • Textile mills resist sociological study
  • Clash between mills and university over unions
  • Violence stunts union organizing efforts
  • Mill owners react violently to efforts to organize
  • University won't employ both husband and wife at once
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Resources for Educators
  • Southern Women Trailblazers Learning Object
  • Subjects
  • University of North Carolina. Institute for Research in Social Science
  • Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (U.S.)
  • Trade-unions--Officials and employees--Southern States--Education
  • Women in trade-unions
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.