Title: Oral History Interview with Flossie Moore Durham, September 2, 1976. Interview H-0066.
Identifier: H-0066
Interviewer: Frederickson, Mary
Interviewee: Durham, Flossie Moore
Subjects: Children--Employment--North Carolina Women in the textile industry Textile workers--North Carolina--Health and hygiene Bynum (N.C.)--Religious life Bynum (N.C.)--Social life and customs Bynum (N.C.)--Race relations
Extent: 01:22:54
Abstract: Ninety-three-year-old Flossie Moore Durham reflects on her long life in Bynum, North Carolina. Durham began work at a Bynum cotton mill at age ten, remaining there until she married at age eighteen. She spends most of this interview describing the rhythms of mill life and detailing her life as a wife and mother. Unlike some of her contemporaries, she remembers mill work fondly. The hours were long, but she felt like she was part of a community, and in some ways the cotton mill did seem to reflect southern society in the early twentieth century, with its sharp gender divisions and rigid racial caste system. This interview will provide researchers with a glimpse of mill life in North Carolina at the beginning of the region's industrialization.