Oral History Interview with Kathryn Killian and Blanche Bolick, December 12, 1979. Interview H-0131. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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Abstract
Kathryn Killian and her sister Blanche Bolick recall their upbringing near Conover, North Carolina, and their careers making gloves. They fondly remember the distant world of their childhood, rich in family bonds and community connection. They are less nostalgic for their working lives, however. Killian is the more talkative of the pair, eager to share her dislike for factory work. Her work arrangement was an unusual one: after the death of her husband, who was crushed by a tree, her employer, also her brother-in-law, set up a glove-making machine in her home, making her both a stay-at-home mom and a working mother. This interview offers a useful look at the working lives of women in the early twentieth-century South.
Excerpts
Fondly recalling a childhood of hard farm labor
A modest upbringing rich in kinship
Parents share authority
Rejecting characterization as an old maid for marrying after age eighteen
Dislike for factory work
Working from home while raising children
Minimum wages prompts employers to push workers to produce more
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Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
Subjects
North Carolina--Social conditions--20th century
Farm life--North Carolina
Women in the textile industry
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