Oral History Interview with Margaret Skinner Parker, March 7, 1976. Interview H-0278. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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Abstract
Margaret Skinner Parker was born in Ireland, but in this interview she discusses her experiences working at the company store of a cotton mill in Cooleemee, North Carolina. She and Mrs. Isaac Hall Huske, another Cooleemee resident, remember some of the daily routines of this mill town, dwelling on what they did for fun: singing, attending church suppers, competing for prizes at craft fairs, and watching movies. But life in Cooleemee was not all fun. The pair remembers also the privations of the World War II period and the strike that shut the mill down and led to some economic hardship. This interview is not particularly detailed, but will be useful to researchers trying to form a broad picture of southern mill town life in the first half of the twentieth century.
Excerpts
The tenant farm system in early twentieth-century North Carolina
The importance of the company store in a mill town
Gathering with friends to make and listen to music
A variety of recreations in Coolemee, North Carolina
Churchgoing and craft fairs
A strike brings hardship to mill workers
The effects of World War II on Coolemee, North Carolina
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Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
Subjects
Greenville (S.C.)--Social life and customs
Women in the textile industry
Trade-unions--Textile workers--South Carolina--Greenville
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