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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0267, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Raised on her family's western North Carolina farm, Vesta explains that while still children, she and her brothers and sisters contributed to the household income. Vesta quit school at an early age to enter the mills, but she continued trying to learn. This desire led her to attend the Southern School, a training center run by the Textile Workers Union of America. Following her time at the summer school, Vesta and a group of women from Marion, North Carolina, went to New York to speak to the unions there about labor conditions in the Piedmont. When she returned, she met Sam, and they married a year later.
The heart of the interview focuses on the 1929 Marion Strike. When Marion's factory owners tried to add hours to the twelve-hour work day, the workers walked out. The union organized a food distribution system, overseen by Sam. Sam and Vesta argue that the strike was not controlled by national or communist leaders, but rather by local activists. They explain how tension built in the town as strikers and mill owners grew increasingly antagonistic. On October 2, in an action that came to be known as the Marion Massacre, police opened fired on the strikers, killing six of them. According to the Finleys, deputies had been told to target union leaders. Discussion of the strike leads Vesta to describe the experiences at the Brookwood Labor College and the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers.
Though many laborers joined the strike at first, within a few weeks, some needed more support than the union could offer. These people became strikebreakers, and through their work, the mill remained partially operational. Vesta talks about the positions women held during the strike and the sort of training they received at the labor schools. A variety of journalists, authors, and historians covered portions of the Marion Strike, and the Finleys talk about the influence they had. Though the strike attracted national attention at first, the mill owners soon won over public support, and the Finleys note the reticence of the company to share information about the event to this day.
To close the interview, the Finleys reflect on what has and has not changed within the mills. They also describe the attitude of the contemporary generation toward the strikers and toward unions. One of the biggest changes in the mills had been the ending of segregation, but the Finleys do not believe that desegregation was entirely a good thing. In addition, they discuss the various jobs African Americans held prior to desegregation. In 1928, Sam joined the Ku Klux Klan. He explains why he did so and defends their actions, explaining that he never took part in a racial attack but used the organization to provide for local white citizens. Vesta does not seem to be as eager to defend them. Vesta ends the interview by talking about how much pride she took in being a part of the union movement.
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
Sam and Vesta Finley describe their roles in the North Carolina factory strike that led to the "Marion Massacre."
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I wanted to ask you how long your family had been in the South?
Well, all my life.
Do you know when they first settled in the South?
It was in the 1800's. My grandfather and my father. . . . My father was born in 1872.
Where was he born?
Yanceytown; Byrdville on my mother's side.
Both of them were born there? Do you know anything about where their families had come from to settle in the South?
Well, I don't know that part of it. My great-grandmother was Dutch,
full-blooded Dutch, and my great-grandfather was German. And my father
was a German-Dutch. But my mother's people, they were Proffitts; I don't
really know where they were from. Their name was Proffitt
You said your father was German-Dutch. What was his family like? Do you remember him talking about his family?
No. Only thing I ever heard him talk about was his grandmother. She had a Dutch Bible that she used to read to him, and try to explain to him, you know, when he was growing up. But I never did see her; she died.
Did he live on a farm? Were they farmers?
Oh yes. We were farmers, yes.
Did he have a large family? Did he have brothers and sisters?
Oh yes. All folks back in those days had large families
Do you remember lots of them? They would be your aunts and uncles, then.
Oh yes. Well, all of my uncles on my father's side is dead, and all his sisters except one.
Did any of them stay on the farm?
No, they scattered throughout the country, to different parts. Some of his sisters went to Idaho, and Iowa, out in those countries. And most of his brothers, though, lived in Madison County, in Yancey. And one of his brothers lives here.
Did he ever talk about what it was like to try to earn a living on the farm?
Well, it was just a hard way of living. You just raised the food you ate; and they had cattle and sheep. And back in those days, you know, we had our own meats. We raised sheep to have our own wool, and my mother and grandmother made blankets and socks, and our toboggans and our gloves and all that, you know.
Did they own their own land? Did they own the farm?
Oh yes.
What happened to the farm?
Well, my brother has the old home place now. And my younger sister, they own a lot of the property and houses. My younger sister, she lives in Asheville. She owns quite a bit of property, and several houses.
So it did stay in the family? It wasn't sold or anything?
No.
What about your mother's family? What were they like? Were they also farmers?
Yes, most of them were farmers.
Did she ever talk about what her life was like as a child?
Well, I suppose she did, but that would be so long ago. . . . She was just growing up on a farm. And her father owned some slaves; you know, way back then.
So they were pretty well off, then?
Well, they weren't the poorest of people, but they weren't rich either
Did your father's family ever own any slaves, that you know of?
No, not that I know of. I never heard of any.
Do you remember visiting your mother's parents when you were little?
Well yes.
Did they stay on the farm too?
Oh yes. They lived and died on the farm.
Is their farm still in the family?
Part of it is, yes. Their grandson owns the old home place.
What was your life like as a little girl? Where were you born?
Madison County.
Madison County. Did you grow up there?
Yes I did. I was there until I was seventeen years old, and I came down here to be with one of my aunts and went to work down here.
Well, did you live on a farm also, in Madison County?
Yes, I did. I was brought up on a farm.
Did you have brothers and sisters?
Yes, I had four brothers and five sisters
Did any of them stay on the farm, or did they tend to all leave?
Well, one of my brothers is still on the farm. And then I have a brother
in
How did you spend your time when you were little? Who did you play with, all those brothers and sisters?
That's right. You didn't visit around with people in the country too
much. And then you lived, you know, several miles apart, most people
did; or a few miles apart. No, I was just brought up on a farm: worked
in the fields, hoed corn, and bundled up hay
Was your father able to use all of you as hands of the farm? Did he not have to hire anyone else?
Sure. No, we begin to work the time we was big enough to tell weeds from
the beans.
What kinds of things did your mother do on the farm?
Well, she was mostly tied up with tending the babies, having babies and taking care of the home, you know. She worked in the fields when she had occasion to. . . .
But she didn't ordinarily work. There were enough of you that she
Well, as I say, she usually had to do the hoeing, and keep the little ones at the house, you know, while the rest of us were working in the fields.
Did she do most of that by herself? Or did the older girls help her?
Oh, we all had to help. When we went in from the fields, we had to help do the work in the house too. Before we went to school in the morning we had to carry in stove wood, and feed the chickens, and carry in enough water from the springs to do Mother during the day. And then we had to walk about a mile and a half to school.
What was the school like that you went to?
Well, it was just an elementary school, you know. We had teachers from
Mars Hill, a little town near us. You know, the closest town. I guess
you've heard that they're going to have a college there, you know. But
it was just a country school
How many grades? It was one where all the grades were together, or. . . .
No. Well, some teachers had two grades; most of them, I guess, did, because we had a four room school and we had seven grades. Well, my last years I was in school there it went to the ninth grade; we had a teacher through the ninth grade.
Was that in the same place? In the same building?
Yes.
How far did you go?
Well, I was in the ninth grade when I quit school and went to work. But since then I went to tech school, and I got an equivalent certificate for high school education.
How did it happen that you quit school? I mean, how did that decision come about? Where did you fit in the family?
Well, I had an aunt and uncle that lived here. We came to visit them one
time, and she said that I might get a job here in the mill. So I wrote
her a letter after I got back home, and she found a job for me. And so I
came down here and went to work
How did your parents feel about your coming to work? Were they sad to see you leave the farm?
Well, I don't think they particularly. . . . Of course, they didn't know what the outcome might be, you know. But I think most people back in those days was glad for the girls to get married and get them off their hands. Of course, I wasn't married at that time. But then I came to my uncle's house and they wasn't too worried about it, you know. I went right to work, in what they call the cloth department, cloth room. And so I've been there ever since.
Had any children left before you? Had any children left the farm?
Yes, my uncle; he had left and got a job in Erwin, Tennessee, and worked there.
What about your own brothers and sisters? Had any of them gone before you?
No, except this older brother. As I said, he had gone to Erwin, Tennessee and gotten a job. No, my two older sisters were married. Then my younger sister, of course, she finished high school. And another one of my sisters, younger than her, she finished high school, in Weaverville, North Carolina. She stayed with a family and worked, you know. And then my younger sister, she finished college; hers was just a two year college in Mars Hill.
Were your parents particularly. . . . I mean, did they want and try to encourage you go to on to school? It sounds like with the younger children they were sort of more able to send them.
Well, they didn't send them. They just worked their way through. Found a place to go, you know. And that's why we all, we've got that to know that they better face, you know. . . . We put forth the effort to get into the things. And that's why I came and went to work when I had an opportunity, you know, to work. Of course, all these years I've tried to educate myself, more or less at home, with buying books. I've spent a lot of money on books. And then going to school helped me on this; this Southern School we went to. That helped me a lot in getting out and making acquaintances with other people from different parts of, you know, the country. You learn a lot of things. And then I learned a lot of new things in that Southern School too, and that gave me a great boost. And I've always liked people; you know, to be with people. It was a great experience for me.
And too, I went to New York and stayed . . . well, all around over there.
This one girl that they had; her husband was shot down. And so I went to
New York. We sold buttons and books and made speeches all over New York
and in Philadelphia. First place I went in Philadelphia, we got off the
train and they took us to Union Hall. There were fifteen hundred people
gathered there to hear us talk. What country ignorant girls know. . . .
Though they stood and clapped and made you feel so good, you know
When would this have been? What year was this?
That was 1930.
So that was right after the strike in Marion?
Well yes. That was when I was in school, after I finished and
Oh, I see.
Women Working In Industry. So I went to New York; we was up there six weeks. And I went up to New Jersey. And they wanted us to go on to Massachusetts, but this lady I went with, her husband got killed and she was under a real nervous strain. She wanted to come back, so we came back.
What was her name?
Cora Hall.
Let me back up just a little bit and ask you about when you started working here in the mill. Did you think you were going to be here for a long time, or just until you got married?
Well, the marriage wasn't in my mind at that time, because I was having
too good a time making money. And I was getting some things that I had
never been used to having; you know, having made my own clothes. And
being with people. . . . No, I hadn't thought about marrying Rudy, but
that thing come along and messed me up
When did you first meet? How did you meet him?
Well, he and a quartet was going around the whole country putting on shows: dancing and singing and monkeying-about. They came up here to Eastmere School, and they put on a show up there. I went out and bought a ticket and went with my aunt and my cousins that, you know, I was making my home with. We went up there, and that's the first time I ever seen him.
Oh the stage?
Yes, dancing with a woman.
Well, did you decide to marry him right away, or was it. . . .
No, it was about a year, I think
How old were you then when you got married?
Nineteen.
So you had been working here about two years?
Yes.
Did you stop working after you got married?
Well, we were married in June, and the following May was when the union was here. They fired him, and then I quit work.
Because of the strike?
Well, yes. No, let's see; was it May they fired you? It was May, wasn't it? Yes, I think it was May.
And then you quit work right after that because he'd been fired, or because. . . .
Yes. And then too, I was going to have a baby.
So how did you live? How did you support yourselves?
Well, we were living with his parents at that time. When we first got married we were staying where I was boarding at that time, making my home.
With your aunt and uncle?
Yes. And then he got fired and, of course, I quit work. Then our first
baby died, of course. Then he was out of work for two years, and in that
time I went to Southern School; one six weeks' session in Burnsville,
and then,
I hadn't heard anything about some of you going up to New York. Would you. . . .
Well Miss
Who was it that took you up there? Who was it that organized the trip? Do you remember? Do you remember who it was that organized the trip that you took to New York?
The organizer? It was Mr. Hoffman, Jimmy Hoffman.
No, I mean, who arranged the trip to New York, when you went up to New York?
Well, Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Pieler.
John Pieler was the organizer.
Yes, he was the one
I see. So they were sort of working in cooperation with the Southern Summer School women, like with Lois McDonald. Was she involved in that at all?
Well, no. She was just a teacher. They sent us up there to raise funds to
help feed the people that were out of work, had been thrown out of work
here because of the union. And so we visited different local unions and
sold buttons and little booklets we had concerning the mill village and
the work here. You know, how people had to live under very dire
circumstances. So we raised
Do you remember the name of that woman who took you around?
I ought to, but I don't remember
Had you ever been away from home before?
Not that far
Weren't you sort of scared to go out there and make speeches in front of
eight hundred people
No. I thought about it a lot of times: we were out some mornings 'til two
o'clock in the morning. Come in. . . . Maybe we went to New Jersey, or
Brooklyn, or different places we had to go to make speeches. And
sometimes it'd be two o'clock in the morning before we'd get back to
where we were. . . . And this lady that lived in New Jersey, well, she'd
get off and leave us two girls on our own to where we were living, on
Lexington Avenue in more or less a women's hotel. We stayed there most
of the time. We had another place we stayed a while. But no, I wasn't
scared. But after I got back home and since I've grown older I thought,
really, how much danger we were in, you know. And we'd come out on the
streets at maybe eleven, twelve o'clock at night from
How do you remember feeling about it at the time? Were you excited, or were you. . . .
Oh, I was excited by what all was going on. But mercy me, we were on the
streets in the early morning, twelve, one o'clock. And people coming out
from those movies and dance halls, and drinking and staggering; the
streets would be full of people. But I wasn't afraid; I didn't have
sense enough to be afraid
How did you feel about her going off to New York to do all of this?
Well, I didn't. . . .
Why, he didn't care. He was so busy. . . .
I didn't think too much about it.
. . . working in these places handing out food and clothing. You know, they sent clothing in here from everyplace, and of course the food. I don't know, some of the food was shipped in here, and others were bought locally.
People with farms out in the country, they'd donate a lot of
How many people were you feeding, usually?
I don't recall. There were way up close to a hundred. And some was pretty
large families. We didn't live too high on the hog
Had plenty of vegetables, not too much beef—I mean meat-except, well I had plenty of what you call fatback, pork you know. But I guess the people had as much or more than they was used to eating anyway.
Were you successful in raising money? Did people respond very. . . .
Oh yes. Yes; I did have a list here of the locals that we visited. But we
always had money, got money. They were very generous to help. Then we
told the story, you know, of what was happening down here and how
people'd been thrown out of work because they joined the union. And of
course people in the North was already organized and knew the benefits
of having the right of collective bargaining between management and
labor, you know. So, we really
Let me ask you a few things about why you were working in the mill; actually, what kind of work you did within the mill. You said you started in the cloth room?
Yes. I was inspector in the cloth room.
How did you get trained to do the work that you did?
Well, they train you on the job. They take you in and have an experienced helper to train you.
How long did it take you to learn how to do what you were supposed to do?
Oh, well, about three to six weeks, usually. Now I went to
I see. Do you remember how many of the employees were women?
Well, the majority in the cloth room were women at that time, because it was grading and inspecting cloth. You had to ask the boys to do the heavy lifting work at that time. Of course, in the weaving shop it was about equally, I guess, women and men.
Was it hard for women to get a job in the weaving shop?
No.
I mean, they weren't eager to give jobs to men more than women because it paid more.
Well now, I guess they probably employed more men, I don't know, in the weave shop, because they had to have mechanics and people who did heavy lifting that the women weren't. . . . I guess there were more men, but they weren't discriminated against because of their sex, you know. They hired women as much as. . . . And they do so now.
How old were most of the women who worked in the mills?
Well, some of them went to work at fourteen years of age. I know one lady that's working down there now. She started work at fourteen years of age. Her father was my boss-man; and she's still working. But the average was in the teens, you know, and on up to. . . . Well, they let you work as long as you were able to work. They didn't fire you because you got sixty-five. You worked on until the seventies if you was able to work.
So long as you could cope with the job, you were all right.
Yes, keep up production on the job.
How long were people usually able to keep up production
Well, that would be the only thing.
Was that common, for people to have to quit because they couldn't work any longer?
Well at a certain age, you get up to sixty-five or seventy years old, you know, you're not capable of maybe keeping up with one that was speeded up. The machine wasn't speeded up in those days as they are now. A person sixty-five now can hardly keep up a job in these kind of mills, because it's speeded up so. And you are working piece-work; you've got to make so much "picks", as they call it, on the machines and so forth to keep up production. And if you can't keep up with that production they just get rid of you, now.
They're still working on piece-work now?
Yes.
Did you work on piece-work when you were. . . ?
No, we just worked ten hours a day
Eleven hours.
Was it eleven hours?
That's interesting that the pace is so much faster now. What was the pace like? What did you do when you came to work in the morning, and how. . . .
Well we went to work at the regular hour, seven o'clock in the morning.
But we wasn't rushed like they are today. You'd have rest periods, and
they had what they called the company store, where they sold drinks
and
I know you've heard Ernie Ford sing "I owe my soul to the company store."
Well, that's where it comes from.
But then we had an hour for dinner; you see, we came. . . .
In the middle of the day, you mean?
Yes. From twelve to one we had an hour off for lunch. Most everybody lived here on mill village; most of them did. They'd come home; if they didn't, they carried their sandwiches with them. See, now they've got it set up with cafeterias and all this stuff. But we didn't rush; we'd just stand around and talk. We just sort of kept our work going; you know, the machinery running. But now, you go in there now and you work eight hours; I think it's twenty minutes they allow you for lunch now? Most of them eat on the run, they call it. They carry sandwiches and. . . .
When they
They allow them to smoke. They go smoke, the people that smoke. But they're just allowed so many, and so long at that.
When you were working there and you had an hour off in the middle of the day for lunch, was this in around 1929 when you started working? What were the conditions like in the mill that made people want to go on strike, and made people want to have a union?
Well, just oppression, wanting more work out of us. Now you see, they
brought up this stretch out system, they called it. They'd put more work
on you for the same pay. More work; they didn't know when to quit.
And
Well too, there was unrest because there wasn't any. . . . You came out of that mill every thread on your body wet; you know, perspiration. They didn't have the. . . .
Air conditioning.
Air conditioner or anything, we didn't have. It was just hot in there. You'd just burn to a frizzle, the saying is. But it was starvation wages. I know, I started working in the cloth room; I worked fifty-five hours a week for nine dollars and a big five cents. In the weave shop they paid anywhere from $13-$16-$18-$20, depending on how many looms, you know, you had to run. But on the mill village, these houses were just thrown together: no underpinning at all. They had two pumps on each street here for eight families. One pump used to be in our yard; that's before I moved over here. But we had to carry water; all the families on these streets had to carry water from two pumps to do all their washing. . . .
Had to do your own pumping to get your water. The johnny-house was out in the field.
Which are the industries that do have the unions?
Apree Heater, out at. . . .
Apree Heater.
Yes, Apree Heater, they have one. And what about that down at. . . .
Henderson?
Old Fort Finishing Company? I believe they have one.
There's one or two places have one.
You said that the organizers came in and told people that there were better conditions, and how they shouldn't be living like that. But you said the people went out and sought organizers, tried to get an organizer to come in here and form a union.
They just kept tightening down on people. And Roy Price, and Lee and
another fellow, Ashton, talked to a man over there at the labor camper.
And he couldn't help us much, but he told us where to go to find this
union organizer, Alfred Hoffman. There was a strike at that time in
Elizabethtown, Tenn.
What was Alfred Hoffman like? What kind of guy was he?
Well, whatever he thought, that's what he said. He didn't care who it is. He was all fire in making speeches; he weighed about three hundred pounds.
He was good at making speeches.
When they first come down here we got the courtroom to have a speech in; they filled it up. But then it got to where we couldn't get it no more. They got to have an open-air service or meeting. Every time they could find out anybody attending a union meeting they fired him. That was the last of their job. They
When you were meeting in the courthouse, how did they find out who was going to the meetings? Did they have people there?
No. They stopped letting them have the courthouse.
She wants to know why; how they found out who was going there. They had their scouters around, you know.
It was open. They had
When they fired you, did they come in and tell you that they'd seen you at a meeting? Or how did they fire you?
No. When I come in to work that evening, the supervisor met me at the
door and had my pay. And he handed it to me. And I said: "What's
Who was the guy who fired? Had he been your boss for a long time?
He had a good while. Well then, they kept on firing every time they could find out anybody that joined or attended the meeting. Then we got a little better organized and got a committee to go in and talk to the management. And this Bawden, he told the committee. . . . He laughed at them. He said, "I'll give you ten dollars apiece if you'll strike my mill." Wasn't ten minutes and he just stopped, like that. They tried on the outside laying in the grass and waiting to see what the committee done. And when he come out and shook his head they made a break for the mill, and the people in there looking out the windows they went and stopped off the machinery coming out. And they stopped it off right there. He didn't pay them.
He didn't pay the ten dollars?
That was July the eleventh. Then along in a month or so they called for a meeting with the management. The union organizers met up here at the school building and talked it over, and they signed a contract. The company signed a contract, only for the two or three leaders that we was going to hire back. Well, they agreed to that; we thought we'd get them a job somewhere else. But when it come to a showdown, it was about seventy-five didn't have no jobs. So that called for the second strike.
How did the second strike come about?
Well, they just talked to one another, and wouldn't put up with not taking the hands back that has been working there. These deputy sheriffs, the sheriff, they'd put up him to block that thing, and stop it. When he couldn't get no real good men for deputies—just cutthroats, mean, were all he could get. . . .
Were they from East Marion?
Oh yes
How did they know?
Well, somebody ratted and told.
Yes. I mean, did you find out who told? That was a horrible thing to do.
We had our suspicions, but we didn't know. But anyhow, they were there
and waiting all night; and they had five gallon of whiskey and drank it,
these deputy sheriffs did. One of the crowd told it; it must have been
so. Well, next morning they ganged up at the gate at the time they
changed shifts, when the strike was supposed to come off. Well, all on
the outside ganged up in front of the gate there. And this sheriff and
his deputy and deputies were standing right at the gate. Well, he pulled
a stick of tear gas
Were you close to any of the people who were killed?
No. The morning that it happened I was at home. She was sick and I couldn't get out; or I could, but I didn't. My name was on the list. One of these deputies told it: every man that got killed was marked. They had told them who to kill, the leaders.
So did they, in fact, kill the leaders? Were the people who were killed. . . .
Yes, they were, most of them. They tried to kill the ones that was leaders, you see.
That took an active part in organizing, you know.
But it seems like when they let go with the tear gas that there were a lot of people out there; the shifts were changing. And it sounds like these deputies were sort of drunk too.
Well, they were.
They drank to get up the nerve to do
When they put this tear gas in their face, naturally they turned from it. So when they did they were shot. That's how come they were shot in the back, the ones that was killed. They turned away from the tear gas.
But would you agree that the people, the six people who were killed were the actual leaders of the strike?
No; not altogether, no. You see, they just cut loose broadcast
But they tried to get the. . . .
They was supposed to pick out the leaders and kill them. And this deputy said I was on his list, though I happened not to be there.
You wouldn't have been working in the mill, so you wouldn't have been changing shifts. Were people there who weren't. . . .
Yes, there were people there that wasn't even going. Just going for curiosity; wanted to see what was going on. Oh, there was a crowd of people there. And these six were killed, and there were two or three others: one got a bullet in the hip. And there were several of them just glanced, you know.
During the whole thing, in the July strike. . . . And the second strike then was in October, is that right?
Yes.
Did you run a picket line in front of the mill at all?
All around the mill they had picket lines; well, they'd stake it all
around out back. And the management tried to go in there one time and
unload some coal. They had some coal carts; the
Then they called out the National Guards and had them surrounded too.
They first brought the National Guard up here to town. The
Yes, that's what I was going to ask you.
To get the National Guard down there.
Is that when the National Guard first came to Clinchfield? They didn't come up here to this mill?
They come to Clinchfield first, and then around both of them. And anybody
that doesn't belong there, that wasn't a loyal worker, they'd search
them every time they'd get out.
Home Guard?
National Guard.
Were you around, or did you. . . .
Oh, they searched me time after time.
What were they like, the guys that came in with the National Guard?
Well, they was just a bunch of tin soldiers, that's all.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Before the strike went on here, had you heard of strikes going on in Elizabethtown or in Gastonia?
Yes.
How did you hear about them?
Well, in the newspapers. We didn't hear the real fact of the matter; just what they wanted to put in the papers is all we knew about it.
But did you think of those people in Elizabethtown being in the same situation that you were in, or. . . .
Yes, we thought of it that way. We knew they were.
Was there any communication, except for the organizers? Did any people, come, local leaders from. . . .
No.
In Gastonia the National Textile Workers were doing some organizing. Had you heard about them, or. . . .
We heard about them, but we didn't have much to do with them. We didn't like the tone of their voice. They were communists. They were too much communist, and we were warned not to have nothing to do with them.
Who warned you not to?
The leaders.
The leaders didn't want to have anything to do with communists, but we had them there in the union. Because I was supposed to make a talk at one of the union meetings one night, and I had picked up a book that they had brought in for us to read in. And I was getting my headlines from the story in there from some man. And so when the man that was the head of the meeting that night saw what I was going to talk about, he said, "Don't do that." And I didn't have sense enough to know that the man was communist, you know. So he didn't want me to bring that out in the meeting.
Now
What about Hoffman or Tippitt, Tom Tippitt in Argentin? Were those the people you were very familiar with and felt comfortable with as organizers, or were you. . . .
Yes, we felt pretty good with Mr. . . .
Well, they had a winning personality and a lot of talk. They were educated in the thing. They knew how to handle a situation and when the people, you know. . . .
How did you feel about their coming from the North to the South?
Well we didn't think much about it.
What about the leaders here who you thought were communist, or who were communist? How did you find out about them, or how did you know. . . .
Well, we didn't find out too much 'til later. But when they'd try to squeeze in and take over, we kind of shied away from that.
Do you remember who any of them were?
Well, I won't call names.
Did they live here, or did they come from outside?
No, they come here from other places. Nobody that lived here was mixed up in it.
Well, I believe that Mr. Ross was, and he was from Holland or somewhere. Didn't he come here from Holland?
I don't know where he come from. But there were several of them that. . . .
I believe he was an ex-immigrant.
There were some people from Brookwood Labor College; did you hear about Brookwood?
A.J. Mursky, for one?
Right. Did you meet him? Did you talk to him?
Yes. I liked him all right.
He was Dutch, I believe.
Well anyway, we had a man that went to that Brookwood School up there; Mr. Ayet and his wife went there. Gracie—she's dead now—she went to summer school. And then she went to Bryn Mawr. They had a school there. But Mr. Ayet went to Brookwood.
Do you remember him talking about it? What did he think of it?
Well, he never did make any. . . . Well, he enjoyed being up there, and he thought it was a great experience going. But as far as him a doing any talking much about it, he didn't have an occasion to; except just from person to person you don't hear much. I think maybe he learned something up there about the communists. It was up there they had some too. But he didn't ever talk too very much about it.
Did he try to do any organizing or anything when he came back?
He didn't, no.
No.
Was it all over by then, or. . . .
More or less.
There wasn't much organizing done after these people got killed. It just kind of passed away.
But Mrs. Ayet and me made rugs together. We got burlap, and we went to these hosiery mills and bought these second tops—I mean, they didn't use them as throw-aways; rather they sold them to people. And we dyed them. We made rugs and shipped them all over the country: New York and places.
To raise money for the. . . .
No, for making money for ourselves
I see. I wonder if you could tell me why you think so many people joined into the union. There was an incredible response, wasn't there?
You mean, when they first started it?
Yes.
Oh yes. After a few weeks they'd have an open-air meeting. They had a
meeting place up there. And this man Harper, he was a good speaker, and
he knew all the "hang of it." The crowds would come out there; we'd have
some picking and singing and grinning and
Where was John Piele from?
He was from Durham.
And was he with the United Textile Workers, or had he been here before?
He was a North Carolinian; most of the others came from up North.
Well what she don't know was he was a United Textile Workers.
Had he been here longer than Hoffman, though?
No, he came here after Hoffman, and he stayed longer than Hoffman did. Hoffman done thirty days in jail while he was here.
He was the main organizer, and Piele, I think, came in under him. He left Piele here to fill his place when he went on, you know.
I see.
Now Hoffman was a hosiery organizer. He really didn't know too much about textile as we know it; he was a hosiery worker.
How did you feel about the support you got from United Textile Workers? Did you feel like they were behind you?
We thought they were. And they did help. But they didn't have as much to help with then as they'd have now.
Did you feel sort of like, when things ended in October, that if they had been able to give more it might have worked?
Now they tried to get people jobs other places, we kept on feeding the people who couldn't get work as best they could. The United Textile Workers stuck by us.
Did you receive more support from United Textile Workers than you did from the people, like the farmers, you said, in the area who would give. . . .
I wouldn't say that, because the farmers were able to supply us with beef, potatoes, corn. We used to send a truck out there and get a load and bring it in. And then some of the unions up North, they'd collect second-hand clothes, just box after box of it. Some of it could be used, and some of it couldn't.
Well, that was the Friends. But what was that man's name that came from the Friends' church, that took care of the clothing part of it?
Francis Gorman, he had a hand in it too. He was a United Textile Worker man.
Well, this fellow from a Friends' church—what was his name? He was the one that was here that came here to take charge of the clothing department. I mean, he was the one they had brought in here. But I can't think of his name.
Well I don't know who you're talking about.
Was he a minister?
No, he wasn't a minister, although he did conduct the funeral of those six people that were. . . .
Now this here fellow Mursky conducted the funeral of these that was shot, A.J. Mursky.
Yes, but that man from the Friends' church had part in that.
Well, they had caskets lined up. . . . They had an open-air funeral; couldn't get nowhere else. And this fellow Mursky was the main speaker.
What about the ministers from Marion?
The ministers around here? Nobody thought of it at the time. Wasn't any
local ministers participated in it, did they? But this man from the
Friends' church in New York—but I can't think of his name—and that Mr.
Mursky. No, this poor girl that I went to New York with, her husband
belonged to a church here. And there wasn't even any of the church
people except his sisters. He and I went to the funeral. They were
afraid; people were just afraid to be seen with anybody that belonged to
the union.
They were afraid to go to the funeral then. So only the people who belonged to the union would go?
Yes. Well, friends that had been thrown out of work, you know.
That's about right.
The mill kept running during a lot of this period. Who was running it?
They had more noise than they did. When they first started up they had more noise than anything else. They started up the machinery all along the outer edge where they make a noise, and there wasn't very many went to work.
A lot of the machinery had to stand, you know. But what wasn't afraid to go to work, you know. But the union yapped down there and hollered; called them yellow dogs, wasn't it?
Yes; they called them yellow dogs and made songs about them. Them rascals
made songs about these scabs and
The scabs were the union. . . .
The scabs were the people that left the union and went back to work.
Yes.
How many of those were there?
I couldn't tell you the number, but there were several of them.
I mean, like half a dozen or a dozen?
Oh, more than that.
Did you talk to those people?
Oh yes.
Were they your friends? Had they been your friends before?
Some of them was. For a long time some didn't get over it that easy. But we still stayed friends.
What did you see as their reasons for going to work?
Well, we just thought that they didn't have good sense, you know.
No, but I'll tell you. A lot of them had large families, and they didn't
make enough money to live on. Well, they just didn't make enough money
to give their children balanced meals, or to dress them in a way that
they would like to. And they just preferred not to belong to the union,
and that was their privilege and their right. But the union wanted to
make them, you know.
I remember reading a letter that Minnie Fisher wrote to Louise
McClaren
Well, no; I don't remember right now about it. But of course she went back to work. But her husband wasn't working. Well, she had one daughter (she lived up here in back of me); I assume she went back to work because she felt like she had to.
I wanted to ask about the local leaders, the people who would, like, tip off and begin a strike, the two strikes that happened inside the mills. How many people were there like that who were local leaders; not from outside, not organizers, but. . . .
Well, at that time the president and the vice-president of the local union, there wasn't no outsiders in it. No outsiders at all.
And Roy Price was president, right?
That's right.
Who was vice-president?
Dan Elliott, I believe.
Do you remember any of the other officers?
Well, I had a little part in it.
What officer were you?
I was secretary.
He kept the record of names of people that joined.
What happened to those records? I read that there was no record at all of who belonged or how many people joined.
Well, I've got a copy of that old injunction that's got the people's name on it, if that's what you mean.
Well you didn't keep a record, though; the secretaries didn't. . . .
No; we didn't have but very few meetings, you know. Mostly it was sneaky meetings; we had to meet in private. Anybody that had $1.50, that's what it cost to join. If they didn't have it, they'd join anyway.
But you didn't keep all their names on the record?
Yes, but I don't know where it is.
Do you think it was trash?
And some of them wouldn't want to be knowed anyhow, because it might cause them to lose their job—what few did get back in the mill.
Sure. How did you and Roy Price and Dan Elliott get along with the organizers? Was there ever any feeling that they were trying to take over what you, as leaders of the union, should do?
No. We got along fine.
And they just helped you out whenever you needed it?
Well, they just explained the union, what it stood for and what it was all about; that's the thing we didn't know anything about. And they helped us.
Any information that they didn't know about, they consulted with them, you know.
But when you had a meeting, you were actually running the meeting?
They'd have people from the mill; whenever they'd find out (just like I said), somebody in the crowd'd tell. They found out where we were going to have a meeting, they'd send somebody so as they could get you to spy on us and see who was there and what went on. So we got onto that. And we spread the news one day we were going down about fifteen miles down in the country there to have a meeting. We saw a master mechanic get in his car and take off down the road. We went another way and held our meeting.
Well, what was Lawrence Hogan? Wasn't he one of the main leaders someway or another. I know he's the one that helped decide when we'd have a meeting and who the speakers were supposed to be, and so forth.
Well Lawrence, they make an organizer out of him. And he got killed in a car wreck at High Point.
That's Irene's brother we're talking about; Irene Hogan.
Well, then did he ever go out of Marion and organize?
Yes, he went to Hickory and down to. . . .
High Point.
High Point and Greensboro, down in that section.
How long did he work as an organizer?
Oh, a year or two.
And then did he come back here?
No, he got killed down there.
Oh, he got killed very soon after that, I see. I thought you meant recently.
What about the role of women in the union?
Well, they didn't have anything much to do except just holler and scream
around when they was on picket lines
You mentioned before some of the people who came to speak while you were at the Summer School; you mentioned Frank Graham and. . . .
Frank Graham and Paul Green. He's a drama . . . he writes plays, doesn't
he? He was up there one time; he was just a young fellow. He came up
there with Frank. But boy, Frank Graham carried me away. That man used
words to express what he was saying and oh, it was wonderful to hear him
talk
And Sinclair Lewis was right on the picket line with us.
Did you meet and talk to him?
Yes, he was right in the crowd. That was when he was writing. . . He wrote one or two books about this strike. You can't get a hold of them no more; I don't know what happened to them.
Don't they have one in the library?
I don't know.
Yes, somebody told me they had one; who was it was here said they had a book that they got at the library? They're bound to have one up there.
I went to the bookstore and asked the man about it. Oh, he said there was some book written about it. He wouldn't talk to me about it; he wasn't interested.
Somebody around here told me they got one at the library to read.
There was a boy, a young man that came by here about two years ago. Going
to school, and he was going to write about this Marion strike. I talked
to him out there a good little while. And he wanted to find out who
lived here
And then even at that
I told you that; I don't care. And he told me the ending: "Well, that man
come here wanting to know
Do you think they do have the records?
Yes, they've got records, but nobody can see it.
I just wondered if you thought they really did.
Yes. But there's never been no boiler explosion and no records destroyed. He was just quick on the trigger.
He just told him that because he didn't want to. . . .
You said the women were on the picket lines. Describe how the picket lines worked. Did they go all day and all night, or did they only go. . . .
They changed shifts. At every gate, every place you could get into the mill they put anywhere from two to six to eight men. And they had these oil drums, and burnt coal to keep warm at night. They didn't let nobody get near; owners nor nobody else.
Did some people cross the picket line? The loyal workers, the people
Not 'til they killed some of them and shot them down. Now they had some coal that needed to be unloaded. Well, Mr. Baldwin went over here and got a bunch of men to come down there to unload the coal, but the picket line wouldn't let him through. One of them took a walking stick and tapped him up on the side of the head with it. He said: "That'll do; some-one struck me."
Well, I'm talking about until they shot them. They signed a contract: everything they asked for (and it wasn't much). They worked eleven hours a day. They asked for a ten hour day, and this company agreed to everything they asked for. Except, now, they say: "There's two or three leaders that we don't want to hire back." Well, the union men says: "Maybe we can get them jobs somewhere else; just two or three." They signed this contract up in the school building. And the next morning when they went in to work about seventy-five people didn't have any jobs; they wouldn't take them back. So that's why they struck the second time.
Were you one of the seventy-five?
I was one of the seventy-five. Wouldn't even let me get my tool box; they brought it out to me.
I wanted to ask: were there children on the picket lines?
No.
Did the women go on the picket line more often than the men?
It was mostly men on the picket line.
They think a lot of the girls.
We'd have parades sometimes from here (a hundred or two) parade over to
the other mill, you know, and back. They would go run through the parade
with a car. They'd give a man fifty dollars to go through the parade
with a car. We went over to Clinchfield, and there was a woman got right
in front of a car, stretched her arms out that way and dared him to hit
her. Well, they got him stopped, and he got a shotgun and a rifle in his
car. Some of the boys pulled him out and roughed him up a little bit.
They took the guns to town and swore out a warrant for him. And there
never was a thing done about it. But later one of Mr.
Was there much communication between you here and the Marion Baldwin mill and the Clinchfield mill?
Oh yes.
Who were some of the leaders over there?
Well, Herman Wilder
Well, she was wanting to know who was the leaders.
Right now I can't recall their names. But they took both mills in. And this mill down here was, I'd say, about eighty percent organized, and Clinchfield wasn't. That hurt, because they was ready and wanting to go back to work, and down here they didn't want to. It caused confusion.
So you think they should have formed two locals?
Yes.
Yes; that's where they made their mistake.
But they didn't. They had it all in one local. And they
When the whole thing was over, did you think that it had achieved anything? Did you think it was worth what had happened?
Well, I don't know whether anything that's any good is a cause of bloodshed always. And if you consider these old houses here on stilts, go out there in the street and pump your water by hand (maybe have to wait 'til the well filled up again before you could get some water), and go on back here out in the fields in back of the house to the toilet, and running water; if you consider water in the house, toilets built-in, anything, it done us good.
It done a lot of good. And too, these streets. . . .
When they first had the strike, then newspaper reporters—Sinclair Lewis and the bunch of them—they flocked here from everywhere to get stories. And they was taking pictures of these old houses and everything, and plastering the headlines on the front pages of their northern papers. Well, they got busy before anything ever got settled and went to putting water in these houses.
And the streets were just cinders that they took out from there; they just got rid of them by just putting them in the streets. So we got streets now. It did a lot of good. And in the inside it was messy; they didn't keep the mill cleaned up, the toilets and things in there like they should have.
One or two times lately they've got to talking union talk around, and when they get to talking that pretty strongly they get better to the help—just for a week or two. Want to be good to them. But after it blows over then they just get back like they were.
So the permanent changes were mainly in the form of material things,
Well yes, they've had a real good
Well, three or four years ago they got to talking it pretty strong and things looked good. And the manager of this plant here stopped everybody's jobs in the whole mill, stopped their jobs off and called them out to the conference room and had a little talk with them. Everybody. And he told them: "Now," he said, "they're trying to organize a union here, and we don't want that. If they organize it," he said, "we'll shut down right then. We're losing four thousand dollars every day we're on." Well, anybody knowed he was lying.
Well, he made believers out of them.
Didn't out of me
And you know that was just a. . . .
And he said, "If you get that union, we'll close it down, because we wouldn't care a bit to close it down."
You said a lot of people were believers. How did they believe that? Why did they believe that?
Sure. Well, because the big fellow had called them, you know. The big
fellow said so
And then when it went for us to have an election, they hired people (several of them) to come in. They give them jobs in order for them to vote in this election; and when the election was over they let them go.
Oh, you mean to vote against the union?
To vote against the union. It was pretty close, I think, at
But anybody that had a cent of reason in them knowed that any company couldn't run a loss like that. That's just absolutely out of the world to think they'd do that. But a lot of people: "Well, they said it, and they're losing that money to give us a job. We ought to appreciate it."
Were these people mainly your age, or were they younger than you, who believed this?
Well, in this last go-around they was the younger generation; I mean, you know, younger than now.
A lot of them don't know about what happened back in 1929.
Oh all these young people, they don't know anything about it.
They don't hear from their parents?
Well, if they do they don't take it in.
That's interesting. What about your own children? I'm sure they've heard you talk about it.
Well, they believe what I say
It was all over though before they came along.
Were they proud of what you had done?
Well, I couldn't say for that. I believe they'd fight for me
Well, I think they were proud to the extent that they knew that living conditions were improved greatly on the mill village. And then they did raise wages gradually along, and the people got to living better. Of course now, these people working down here makes over a hundred dollars, and some of them close to two hundred dollars every week now. Where it used to you didn't.
I've worked many a week for five dollars.
You used to work fifty cents a day when you first started. That was before my time. But it was just a sweat-shop slave place. And they were making money.
They'd blow a whistle at five thirty in the morning to wake everybody up, to be sure to get them up and get their breakfast and get to work by six o'clock. Well, they worked 'til six that evening, and another shift comes and works 'til six the next morning. They'd stop, maybe, fifteen-twenty minutes to eat a little bite. But now this night shift, it was just all night. Then when they had that strike, they cut it down from twelve hours (never stop), they got it cut it down to where they worked 'til five o'clock in the morning. And they'd go home and the other shift would come in and start right up.
When you went to work for the Clinchfield Mill, that would have been in the later part of the thirties, right? What were conditions like then?
Well, it wasn't too late in the thirties.
About the mid-thirties, I guess.
There was a couple of years I couldn't get a job anywhere. Because they'd check the books, found out who I was, and they found out where I was in that strike in Marion. And they'd have all kinds of beautiful talks, you know, and tales, but they wouldn't say, "We can't hire you because you're a striker."
When you went to work for Clinchfield, were conditions better there as well?
Not much. I went to work; the job was run down, and it was just a break-neck job. And I went in there and worked my eyeballs out trying to straighten it out. And I got credit for trying.
But the union didn't affect the Clinchfield people like it did here.
People would go in these outside houses when they. . . . Naturally the mill company wanted to order them out of these houses. They'd give them orders to move out of the house. Well, if they didn't move the sheriff would get a bunch of deputies and tear every piece of furniture out, just cart it out in the street.
Now this was in '29, right?
'29 and '30. A lot of times when they'd carry this furniture out, that night the house would catch fire and burn down. That done that several times.
Were you ever. . . .
I never was in there burning
Were you ever made to leave your house? Did you rent a house from them at the time?
No, we weren't living on the mill village at all.
So you were sort of protected from that. You were living. . . .
With my parents.
Had they worked in the mill?
No.
His sister did. No, his father run a grocery business and a taxi business.
In Marion?
Yes.
Well now, one time when they carried all the furniture out of the house,
the boy just stood around and watched them; and quick as these
What did they do to them?
They never come back. If they'd have done that, later on they'd have carried it out again.
What did people do when they were evicted?
They'd just hunt someplace to move to.
That was terrible; terrible what people had to suffer. The company felt like that if people wanted to work for them, if they wanted to work for what they was paying, it was their right to do it. And if they didn't, they wasn't supposed to hire them. And when the union sent me here to organize a union here, they felt like they were infringing on their rights. And the people were living in such dire circumstances, until they were fighting for a better livelihood. And so it was just a cross; well, it's always been that.
They moved the trial, the trial of these deputies. There was fifteen of them, I believe it was. And the judge held preliminary hearings. And he'd get one of these deputies on the stand and he'd say, "Did you fire a shot?" "No." "Stand aside." Called another one up there. "Did you fire?" "I shot at so-and-so." And they'd hold him for trial. The only word what went. . . . Now if he said no they turned him loose. Now it got down to about six, I believe it was. And they were afraid they couldn't get a fair trial here and they moved it over to Yancey, Burnsville. And one of the lawyers had been there all his life and he knew everybody in the county. The jury was picked. And when it come to trial they just turned them loose.
They had that while were in summer school over there at Burnsville. And
we came down to the courthouse to hear us some of the trial. And
It wasn't Tate. Now this man I'm talking about was
Did you go over to the trial?
No, but I did try a lot of times when it was held right here. They moved it, then, over there.
Right. So you went to the ones here?
Yes. They turned them loose, and then they brought out a suit against them. They threw that out.
What do you remember about sitting in the courtroom? How did you feel while this whole thing was going on?
You said a few minutes ago that there was a cross between the mill people
who wanted better conditions for their families and themselves and the
owners who wanted to make a profit in their industry. What about Marion
as a
The uptown people, they sided with the company.
Because there's so many that are stockholders.
And after these workers had worked out what money they could get and come up there to spend it with them in their stores, they'd go agin them. Cut their own throat, not knowing what they were doing. They would line up with the company agin us.
How did other people in Marion earn their money? You said some of them were stockholders in the company?
They owned the stores uptown, see, and had a little stock in the mill. They didn't want anything to bother working people, as long as you could work and get what work they could get out of you. That's what they was
Where did the people who controlled the mill live?
Well, they had their houses, still have.
Most of them lived up in Baltimore, up in that section. And then they'd just send word down here to the underdogs. . . .
Well, back then it was Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Copeland from New York; they lived up there. And what was that lady from England, Mr. Baldwin's sister?
But they were people from up North, more or less, the president,
vice-president, the big stock holders. But local people had stock in it
too, you know; small amounts—some of them had more. They were looking
after the
Were there any people who you ever met who were controlling this mill who seemed concerned or interested in working people?
Well, on the surface they would pretend to be; but I don't know if at heart they really were.
What about the sort of underdog superintendents, the people who were agents; the section bosses or the administrative people like this guy you were talking about, Sparkey who was in the personnel department?
Harper?
What about those people?
Well, they get their orders, and they jump for the man whistling.
Well, they might at heart, but they couldn't afford to speak up, because they had their jobs and they knew they'd lose their jobs. And, of course they made more money that just the regular help: the overseers, the superintendent and all that.
Were most of them from around here?
Yes, they were mostly local people.
Back then they carried out the orders pretty good. But now, for the last
few years the management has fired some of these
Why?
Whenever there's something going wrong somebody's got to be
If a man is an overseer, we call them, or boss, employer; if they don't come up with production or if they come up with what they call committee seconds (bad cloth), if they can't get that straightened out with the employees and get to running they fire them. They put somebody else on the job.
And then too, this new bunch that came in down here for the last few years, when they first came in down here they wanted to fire everybody over thirty-five years old, wasn't it.
Workers?
Yes. They laid off people down here, this young bunch that came in. All of them were young people; I don't know many of them at all that's down here now. But when the older people got out these young fellows came in right out of college, and they wanted everything run in an efficient way. All these people over thirty-five that couldn't come up to production, they were laid off or fired. They laid off and fired so many, 'til they got where they didn't have enough to run the machinery. And then they tried to get people back. Some of them did come back, and others went elsewhere. Lot of people from here were working in Morganton and different places.
I retired down there in 1956; I've been back seventeen times since then to work, anywhere from a day to six weeks. They'd get on the phone and want me to come back and help them; somebody had quit and they didn't have another fellow on the job.
Were you working at that time? When these young people came in?
No.
How long have you been out?
I've been out about fifteen-twenty years. No, I wasn't working
Do most of them take a quit, or has that resulted in some better conditions, because they refuse to. . . .
Well, I'll tell you. The majority of the young ones today don't want to work, period.
That's what I say; they've been brought up in homes that they. . . .
They never have had to work.
Never have had any responsibility; their parents just. . . .
And they'll get the job; and as long as training is going on, all right. But when it comes to being responsible, they don't. Go somewhere else and learn something there.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
When did the colored people come into the town? Had they been here for very long, or were they working in the mills when you started working?
No. The colored people didn't come to the mills. . . .
Last two years.
Only scrubbers; scrubbed the floors.
Shoveled coal and such matters.
They didn't come to the mills up until right recent years. They won't
work now; they're worse than the white people now about working. Once in
a while you get one that works. There's a colored girl that comes down
here to the employment office and told this man Parker, she says: "I
want the secretary's job; I'm abdicating."
But now, some of them work. They've got girls that's secretaries to the various employers, overseers. But a lot of them lay out; I think they get drunk on weekends (you know how hangovers. . . .) and they lay out. But they don't get the work out of a lot of them.
How many Negroes were living in Marion while you were working in the mills, would you say?
Oh, there were several. They worked on the railroad. They didn't work in the mill, they worked on outside jobs.
Where did they live?
They had a place over here they call Moreheads.
Black Bottom.
Black Bottom, and Shake a Leg, Mexico. There's a street out over the way there that they just lived in shacks. Now they can get by better and look like better than the white people, of course.
Well now, there are a lot of them got good jobs: they paint, they work on highways.
Recently. But back then they didn't have.
But just since this integration thing's been up, since we've had them,
you know . . . they have to work them, and it's been a good thing.
It's
Now one thing that helps them hold off, we've got a welfare system that all they've got to do is go up there and get the stamp books. Pay just a little bit and get enough stuff to last them a month. But they don't have to work; you can't hire one of them to work; no sir. "That's cutting my relief off."
You've got some white people up there too, you know.
I know; we're talking about the colored people now.
But it's amazing the freedom and the hoard of changes brought in.
What kind of specific changes were there in Marion with integration. You said the mill had to hire them in jobs.
Well, there was rejection, of course. They opposed it, but it was the law and so they couldn't turn them down on account of their race, you know.
What about in the schools?
Well, we've gotten along very well. Now, they've had one or two little flare-ups, not to amount to anything.
We had a few fights in the high school. We had a little trouble last
year, I think. At the beginning they had some trouble because the
colored boys. . . . I think the colored people, when they first got
their freedom
The chairman of the school board's a colored man.
Yes. We've got some colored teachers, you know.
Back to the 1929 strike, for a minute, how did the colored people react to the strike?
Well they didn't take no part in it and had nothing to do with it.
There wasn't enough of them working.
They wasn't concerned with it, because they didn't work in the mill, see.
I see. There was no communication or relationship?
No, there wasn't.
Did any of them quit working? I mean, even the scrubbing jobs, loading coal and all?
Oh, they didn't pay any attention. They just went on hauling.
When the mill closed down?
There wasn't too many of them, you know.
You mentioned the women being able to understand colored people as far as, because those had been discriminated against. I wondered if many of the black women in Marion worked in homes of white people?
Oh yes. That's what their main jobs were. They were taught to be good cooks; you know, that's what they knew the girls were mostly going to do, housekeep for people. But that's what they did mostly.
Did any of the mill people have cooks?
Oh yes, the superintendent, the presidents and the vice-presidents, they had women that came in and cooked, and took care of the children and did the housework. Most of them did.
What about workers? Like men and women who worked in the mill? Were they ever able to afford cooks?
No.
No, they couldn't afford it. They had to get up and get their breakfasts, go on to work, and leave the children to take care. . . .
Some of the main employers might have had a woman come in, maybe once a week and do the laundry and ironing. A lot of them would come in and do that, you know. And then a lot of them had babysitters, come take care of the babies while the mothers worked.
Would this be workers, or would this be higher employers?
The higher employers.
I wanted to ask about laundry; did people send their laundry out, like to a washer-woman?
A lot of them back in those days, the colored women would come to the
house and do their washing, more so than—well, some of them, I guess,
may have carried them to the colored people's home, but I think most of
them came
What about women who were working in the mill? What did they do for child care?
Well, usually the younger women, their mothers or grandmothers took care of them, you know. Or they had a colored girl that would come in and stay in the home, some of them. Not many of the workers could afford it. And some of them made arrangements; maybe one would work one shift, the father one shift the mother one shift, and managed that way, you know.
Do you remember them ever passing something where women couldn't work at night? A law where women couldn't work at night? Were women always able to work on the night shift if they wanted to?
Yes.
There used to be one you couldn't work more than so many hours a day. Nine hours, I believe, in one day. There used to be a law to that effect.
What about after nine o'clock at night; you never heard of a law that women couldn't work after nine o'clock at night?
No, that's not never been. . . .
Not been here, that I ever knowed. If it was, it was before my day.
Did men and women tend to work the same shifts?
Yes.
Forty-eight hours a week; there was a law that a woman couldn't work but forty-eight hours in any one week. A man could work just as long as he could stand up.
Was that enforced?
Yes!
I mean the forty-eight hour week law. Was that enforced?
For the women.
Yes. That was before they got down to eight hours.
Did you ever work while your children were small?
Yes, I did. I went to work when my youngest girl was nine months old; my mother-in-law took care of her. But I worked on the third shift ten years; he worked on first shift. That way I could put the children to bed; they weren't really little, some of them went to school. But I could put them to bed before I went to work at night; and then when I came home in the morning those that went to school, I stayed up and put them to school. And my sister stayed with me, and she worked on second shift. Managed that way, you know.
I wanted to ask you about the health of the people who worked in the mills. Were people generally in pretty good health; or what did it do to your health to work in the mill?
I don't know. We used to have some real pale looking people that worked
in that mill
Scurvy?
No, you don't call it scurvy.
Pellagra?
Yes. A lot of people used to have that. And then we had people that used
to have TB; and it might not have been TB, it could have been what
If you were ill, was it easy to get to a doctor? Did the company have doctors?
No, the company didn't have doctors back then.
The doctors, you could call them and they'd come to the house. But now they don't do that no more; you've got to go see them.
Oh, back in those days most doctors were dope
Alcoholics.
People in the mill village didn't have trouble getting physicians to come out to their houses?
No, no more than anybody else.
No, they'd come.
I wanted to ask you about the churches in Marion. You mentioned that you belonged to the church; was it important in your own life? Was the church important in your own life?
Oh yes, it's a very important part of your life. Because, after all, we live and move and have our being in God, you know. And that's where you get your spiritual food. I don't know how people. . . . Well, most people exist without going into church, but to me that's one of the most wonderful parts of your life. Because once you have the Lord in your heart you have an inner peace that people that's not in church or doesn't belong to church, they don't have that inner peace. It's just not there.
When they organized the union, one of the churches expelled a
What did you think about that at the time?
Well, we just thought they wasn't what they claimed they were
Was this true in almost all of the churches in Marion?
As far as I know they were. The people around our mill village. . . . Now, of course, uptown churches, those people, not too many of them worked in the mill. You see, they worked in the stores and things of that nature; it didn't affect them too much. It was just the working class people that made their livelihood in the mills, you know.
Which church did you go to?
Well, I used to go, I was brought up in the Baptist church, but now I
belong to Pentecostal Holiness church. But I was brought up in the
Did you bring up all your children in the Pentecostal church here?
Yes. But some of them don't go to church. My daughter, she's Methodist;
she's pianist and organist too at the Methodist. And I have one daughter
in St. Augustine that goes to the Pentecostal church there. The other
three, they don't go to church, except when they want to
You spoke about the discord in the churches in 1929 over the union. I wonder if you could explain how it was divided? Were people divided within families? Did men sometimes want to join the union and their wives didn't want them to? Or did people tend to be divided according to the work they did in the mill? Or why were the workers split on that issue within the church?
They wasn't divided too much in the families. They stuck together pretty well. But there were some few that just thought that they were better than the others. They didn't join, and they thought the ones that did was a disgracement to the earth.
Now, I think some of the church people thought it was a wrong thing to do, and they fell out with the people in the church that felt that it was their privilege and a better way to a better livelihood. And there was discord there on those bases.
How was it divided? About evenly as far as numbers were concerned?
No.
So what about the stewards and the deacons, maybe, that were there. What side would they be on? Would they be evenly divided?
Well, yes, there were some of them that was deacons. Mr. Elliott, they
turned him out of church, or treated him so badly (he was a Baptist) he
and his
Was he a deacon?
He was a deacon, yes. They were both workers in the church. But now in his family, some of the deacople wanted his mother to run him off from home because he belonged to the union. Her own child!
Did she support him?
Sure she did!
She was a good Christian woman too.
But when she wouldn't do what they wanted her to do. . . . She went to church, and after church they'd have a little handshaking and. . . .
Fellowshipping!
And she walked up to one of these main deacons and reached her hand out to shake with him, and he turned his back on her.
What about the ministers? What about your own minister at the time? Did he ever talk to you?
Well, he kind of tried to stand on neutral ground.
They tried to calm both sides.
He was a good person, and he didn't want to . . . where he'd decide. Of course, he wasn't involved; he didn't have to be involved. He tried to stay on neutral ground, because he didn't favor either one. Really, that was the position he should take, you know. He was a man of God preaching the gospel, and he wasn't supposed to be on either side. I don't know, some of the preachers may have sided. Anyway, our pastor didn't, because he had judgment about him; had wisdom enough not to, you know. . . .
Did any of the ministers side with the workers?
Well, what I say, I think they tried to walk in the middle path,
How long did the union stay around after 1929?
Well, they were here in the early thirties, because it was in '30, in January, when I was in New York. It was in the early thirties when it was all disbanded.
Yes.
What happened? What was the final decision that made it disband?
Well, they decided we don't have any union any longer, but we'll try to figure so we can get you a job. They did that. And they just kind of phased it out, so people went other places and got jobs.
Like Roy Price, who left?
Like Roy Price, and different ones.
Were you really in the minority because you stayed?
One of them; there were several stayed here. But I was about to work somewhere else, but at that time you couldn't hardly get a job.
After the union was disbanded, were there ever any other organizations that you belonged to that tried to do the same sort of thing as the union?
No, I never did join up no more
What about any other groups or organizations other than the church that you were involved with, like the Masons or the. . . .
Well, I didn't ever get involved with the Masons. I've been
I don't know about the Masons and that. Were they opposed to the union?
I don't think so. They didn't take no part in it, the Masons.
Who belongs to the Masons?
Well, it's a think that you've got to get worked up into. You can't just go and say, "I want to join." Somebody's got to take you on in it.
What people in town belong?
Some of the store keepers and owners?
Is it mostly uptown people?
Businessmen. Uptown people.
Uptown people.
You mentioned another group, the Redmen? What's that?
Oh, that's just an organization. Mostly male people go for that.
Men, I take it; not women?
No, women didn't used to belong. They do now but. . . .
They have their meetings and fish fries and picnics and things like that. And they've got headdresses they wear. They have a lot of fun when they get a paleface to join.
But the Ku Klux. . . . Now people didn't like that people; they still don't down here.
Well, I'll tell you about the Ku Klux; they never did know what it was all about.
Who didn't know what it was all about?
People around here. You can read about where they done this
She still don't know what Ku Klux Klan was
Gosh, I know she's read about Ku Klux.
Well, I guess you have studied about it, haven't you?
I know she's read about it in the papers.
Yes. That's the one that's national, right?
Yes.
Well, when did you belong to them?
1928.
Why did you join?
Well, I wanted to see what it was all about, for one thing.
Just to get into something. He had to wear a ring.
Anything that was done that was bad, it was laid on the Ku Klux.
What did the Ku Klux do good?
Listen, she don't know.
No, I don't.
She never got to belong; I don't think they accept women, do they?
No.
They'd find out somebody that was doing the wrong thing, and they'd have a talk with them, somebody would.
Like, what was the wrong thing?
Some man beating up his wife, and cruelty to animals.
Beating up his wife, and wouldn't feed his children, and anything like that. They'd have a little talk with him. And sometimes they have got the man to working.
And if he didn't straighten up and do, they'd go in and flog him.
Did you ever do that?
No! I never done that. That's just talk.
What do they do?
They wear these-here white robes, and just a place to look out the eyes.
You can't see . . . you don't know who they are.
When was this?
Oh, that's along in the early thirties.
Why did you go to Gastonia? What was the parade for?
Well, they'd have meetings and elect officers and different things, you know. And they paraded around this Catholic school, and you couldn't see nobody. They were against Catholics, because the Catholic was running for president and they wanted to beat him. And they done it to the churches.
Well, when you belonged here in Marion, did you get to know the other people? I mean, when you met with the Ku Klux Klan, did they take off the. . . ?
Yes, when you got in the hall, the meeting place.
Who belonged to the klan? Who belonged to it then?
Oh, there were lots and lots of my friends here in it. We had a lot of fun when they had to go over to Ashville or somewhere they were having a meeting, or Johnson City, Tennessee.
Did any of the people from uptown belong to it?
Yes, but none of the people from the mill right here did. At the Clinchfield mill, some of the boys up there did.
Some of the. . . .
Workers.
But none of the workers from this plant?
None but overseers.
And none of the workers from Baldwin?
I don't remember right now of any from down here. But at that time I was working at Clinchfield.
Was it mainly sort of a way to keep up with people who were beating their wives, or Catholics? Was there any racial involvement? That's what the klan is usually associated with.
Now there was a little of that. They didn't care about Jews or Niggers. They wouldn't go into a Jewish store. They didn't want nothing to do with the Niggers; that was the Ku Klux.
Don't say Nigger; that's colored or black people.
Well, colored men. Now they kept up the work against that. . . .
Did they ever do anything against. . . .
Nothing more than talk.
Human beings is just the same today as they were a million years ago.
That's what we're finding out.
You know, you think, "I'm right, you're wrong. And you can't convince me that I'm wrong, and I can't convince you that I'm right." So it's just a cross; it's always been.
How did you feel about belonging to an organization that was against Catholics and Jews and. . . .
Well, I didn't think anything about it.
He was just in the gang.
I was just a boy, that's all I was.
What did you think about it at the time?
That's before I knew anything about him.
That was in your singing quartet days.
I'll tell you. The whole thing was really organized to beat Al Smith; he was running for president. Well, after he was beat, it just died down.
So by the time the strike came in '29 the klan was non-existent, right?
Not here.
It flares up a little bit in different places. And they have a lot of dirty work. Anybody can get one of their robes, see, and hood and put it on. They finally made a law that you couldn't wear that thing over your face.
Masks.
But anybody could get a hold of one of these robes and put it on; and two of them get out here and beat somebody up. And the minute they leave, well the klan got credit for it when they didn't do it.
As far as any kind of political work around here, have you supported candidates in town, or supported school board people that you thought would be good? Have you been active in any political party?
Oh, he was the register here for this precinct here for how many years? Fourteen?
I don't know. And then, ever since I was old enough to vote I picked out the one I wanted to vote for and done what I could for him.
Worked for him.
Regardless: Democrats, mostly.
Now he's a radical Democrat. And I vote for the man.
I do too, but I always find him on the Democratic side.
I didn't like Nixon much. Of course, you have to belong to the Democratic party to vote in the primary.
Not any more you don't, nowadays.
No you don't, but you used to have to when I first joined. But I try to keep up with the candidates, and the one in my own mind that I make up to think would be the best representative of the people, I vote for him whether it's Democrat or Republican. I don't go in for this. . . .
You haven't been able to win her over to a party line?
No. We don't have no trouble; she goes her way and I go mine. I don't tell her what to do, and she needn't try to tell me!
When did you first vote?
Oh, I guess I was about nineteen years old, twenty, somewhere.
No you wasn't. You had to be twenty-one years old to register.
Oh yes, that's right, at first. But it got to eighteen now.
Do you remember the suffrage fight? You would have been pretty young. Do you remember the fuss over women getting the vote.
Oh yes, that's back in 1921. I could fight! When you think about back in
those days, if women committed a crime they got the same sentence as a
man. And yet they didn't have the privilege of voting to say who can do
this and who can do that. That's why I say women can sympathize with
colored people.
Do you ever remember your mother voting?
She never participated in anything like that. But my father was very active in things of that nature. No, women back in those days didn't.
Do you remember the North Carolina Suffrage League? Did you ever have have anything to do with people who were fighting for the vote?
No, I wasn't old enough at that time, you know.
You didn't sign any petitions, or anything like that?
No. Let me see, that was back when I was just a little girl.
But ever since you were old enough, twenty-one, you've been. . . .
I vote every time.
Have either of you ever run for office around here, other than for registrar?
No.
When you became involved with the Southern Summer School, I know they were trying to get workers' education classes set up in different towns. Did any one ever try to do that in Marion? Did you or the Elliotts?
No, we didn't. We had talked about it, but at that time there was no opportunity and we couldn't do anything.
I wanted to ask you just a few more questions about the Southern Summer School. How did you first come to the idea of going to the school?
Well, the men that were here that were taking part in organizing the union here just picked out certain ones and asked us if we'd like to go, and got us in those classes because it was something new.
You were gone during a good part of the July activity.
Six weeks.
How did you keep in touch with what was going on in Marion?
Well, we came down occasionally when they'd have their meetings. It wasn't more than about a thirty-five minutes' drive, somewhere about that. We'd come down for that. And then maybe people'd come visit the school and bring reports, people that was involved.
Did any of the women from the school like Lois McDonald or Louise McFadden come in to Marion during the strike?
Well, they'd come down here when they had their meetings. But other than that they didn't participate. Because they were just here for six weeks' period. But as I say, they would come down for meetings and that.
I wondered, when you first went over there, what did you expect from the school?
Well, I didn't know what to expect, because we didn't know. They just told you it was a school for women workers in industry. And of course we didn't know what it was all about until we got over there, you know.
What did you think, or what do you think looking back on it now, about it's having been just for women workers? Was that the first thing you'd ever been involved in that was particularly for women?
Yes, it was.
It sounds like the union mainly was run by men, and although women were on the picket line women weren't officers in the union or anything like that. But women were really running the Southern Summer School. How did you feel about that? Did you think about that at the time? Did it mean a lot to you to have something particularly for you?
Yes it did. It was a great inspiration to feel like that women was considered capable of participating in things of that nature. Before that they hadn't been, you know. It was something new and very interesting to me, and I guess to most of the girls. They had an outlet to speak up, to get up before the student body and talk and express themselves about what they felt should be done and shouldn't be done in our government and in our industry. They never had had an opportunity to express themselves before, and it was a great outlet, mentally and spiritually too.
You said that in all of your life the church meant a great deal to you. I wondered if they had any church services there at the school?
Well now, at Burnsville we didn't attend any service. On Sunday morning we just went outside, sang songs and just things like that. But as far as any religious program, we didn't have it. Now when we were at there was an Episcopalian church there on the campus, and they had their service there. It was a school for boys during the nine months in the winter. And all that wanted to attended church there; and we were welcome there in that church. The majority of them did attend the church there. However, I was working that year—at that particular school I was working in the dining room—and I went to services there when I could. But that was the only religious thing they had.
I see. Did they talk specifically about different kinds of unions? Did they tell you, like, about the organization of the United Textile Workers; or did they talk about the National Textile Workers and the differences between the two?
Well, I don't know that they told us anything about the difference. They
could have, but it's been so long. They did tell us what the unions
stood for, and what they were trying to do for the working people. They
explained
I wondered if you could remember, either of you, the first time you ever heard about a union?
Well, the first time I ever heard of it was when they first came here. I may have read about it, you know. But we didn't have television or radio either back in those days to hear anything. It was just in our newspapers, and people didn't do a lot of reading back in those days like they do now, and keep up with current events. But I think the union opened people's eyes, and they got to reading. And then, of course, since we've got television you know how everybody is. . . .
More aware of what's going on.
Yes. And it brung a happiness to people that they never had experienced
before. Even though we know that there's just going to be a certain
amount of people that's going to be rich, and there's going to be a
bunch of people that's going to have to work for their living, and
they're just going
Did you think at the time (in 1929) perhaps that the union was a way of changing that: of making it so people didn't just reach certain levels and not be able to go beyond them? Did you sort of see that as a way to. . . .
Reaching a little higher
To make it more even.
Yes, that was an eye-opener. I think that's been an eye-opener for all people. But however, the union, I can see now. . . . You take up in Michigan and these places: they keep up everything that a man that's saved his money and invested in industry and places to make a good livelihood for himself. They're imposing; I think they're really gaining too much power.
You mean the union itself or the people who belong to the union?
Yes; well, the organization of it.
Have you ever read anything about the unions in England at the moment? Do you think they're getting too powerful?
Well, I'm afraid they are all over the country.
END OF INTERVIEW