White mill workers earn enough to hire black help
White mill workers made enough money to hire African American women to clean their homes and cook their meals. This passage indicates not only that at least some southern mill workers lived comfortably, but also that African Americans were so poor that they had to accept a very low wage: according to Truitt, just five or six dollars per week.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Herman Newton Truitt, December 5, 1978. Interview H-0054. 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
When both the husband and wife worked in the cotton mill, quite often
they would hire a colored women to come in and probably cook lunch, and
clean up the house and cook supper. She probably wouldn't
work over five or six hours a day. Maybe sometimes and sometimes longer.
They were economically low ebb. And these colored folks would work for
five or six dollars a week. Where husband and wife both worked in the
mill, they could readily pay that and have a couple of hot meals a day
prepared by someone else.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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So you say that would be pretty common.
- HERMAN NEWTON TRUITT:
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Yes, that was quite common.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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Which meals would they most likely have prepared?
- HERMAN NEWTON TRUITT:
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It would be lunch and supper. She might get supper ready and be going
home by the time the folks came in, or maybe before.
