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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 G-0040-1, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
This is the first interview in a series of two with union activist Eula McGill. McGill describes what it was like to grow up in various mill towns in Georgia and Alabama during the early twentieth century. Born in Resaca, Georgia, in 1911, McGill grew up in Sugar Valley, Georgia, where her father worked in the Gulf State steel mill. McGill describes her childhood and early education in this mill town, focusing on her early awareness of union activism in the town. At the age of 14, McGill had to leave school because of her family's economic hardships; she found work in a textile mill as a spinner in the Dwight textile mills. During her teen years, McGill continued to work in textile mills, during which time she briefly married and gave birth to a son. Because she had to work, McGill's parents became the primary caregivers for her child. In the late 1920s, McGill moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she briefly worked at the candy counter at Kress's department store. Shortly thereafter, McGill migrated to Selma, Alabama, where she returned to the textiles industry as a spinner at Selma Manufacturing. McGill describes working during the early years of the Depression, when it became increasingly difficult to make ends meet. During the early 1930s, McGill became involved in labor activism and helped to organize a local union and general strike in 1934. Following that, she moved up in the ranks of the labor movement as a labor organizer. She emphasizes her work with the Women's Trade Union League and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. In addition, she explains some of the obstacles that the labor movement faced in the South and what it was like to be a single woman who worked as a labor organizer.
Eula McGill grew up in Sugar Valley, Georgia, during the early twentieth century. Raised in a working class family, McGill had to leave school because of her family's economic hardships and began to work in a textile mill as a spinner at the age of 14. By the late 1920s, McGill had moved to Alabama, where she became a leader in the labor movement in Selma. Throughout the Great Depression, McGill primarily worked as a labor organizer, first for the Women's Trade Union League and later for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Tell me something about your early life: who your parents were and where you grew up.
I was born near Resaca, Georgia on May 15, 1911. My father worked in an ore mine in Sugar Valley, Georgia, which was a short distance from Resaca. And when that mine was worked out (or what they called "played out"), when they'd got all the ore that they could get out economically they shut the mine down. And we moved to Gadsden, Alabama.
Well, let's talk a little bit more about your life in Georgia. You were born outside Nance's Spring, right?
Near Nance's Spring.
Which was what?
It was a big spring where a lot of people in and around there came and got water. It was just kind of like a community spring, but it was on Mr. Bob Nance's land.
And you lived on his land?
Yes.
Rented a house?
Yes, rented a house.
The area you lived in, was it part of the area that you called the "pocket"?
No, no.
Nance's Spring wasn't in it?
No, the "pocket's" beyond Sugar Valley, about three miles out from Sugar Valley.
Would you describe that area, though?
Well, it's mountainous; now it's made into a national park, but [laughter]
They ran the whiskey across the state line?
It wasn't much good for farming. Well actually, I imagine it looked pretty much then like it is today, because there's not much area in there (that I can see) that could be farmed because of the terrain.
Were people that you knew involved in moonshining?
No, I didn't know them. But my uncles were pretty good drinkers, and I heard of it because they drank.
So your father, then, would walk from Nance's Spring to Sugar Valley to work in the ore mine?
I assume he walked; I don't know of any other way he could have gotten there. And it's not a bad walk; I could walk it, you know. There was a dirt road through there.
You moved to Resaca so he could be nearer to his work?
We left Resaca and moved over in near Sugar Valley sometime after I was born.
But you moved first from Nance's Spring then to Resaca, and then from Resaca to the mine?
No, I call it Resaca because that's the post office, see; I say Resaca because Nance's Spring's in that Resaca area. And Resaca is just a little bitty place—you know, a grocery store and a mill and a post office and a few houses. Just a small place.
Oh I see, OK. So you moved to Sugar Valley, yes.
Yes, shortly after I was born we moved over to Sugar Valley to be a little nearer. Now from Sugar Valley up to the mine the men rode what they called the "dummy line:" it was a little old dinky engine with a car that they used to transport stuff from Sugar Valley up to the mine, and the men rode this car. I was on it one time as a kid, I remember. And it always was jumping the track, and the men'd have to get out and put it back on. But the mine used it primarily to transport things from down at the depot or Sugar Valley up to the mine area.
And then your mother got a job in the night boarding house, is that right?
Momma? Yes, Momma run the night boarding house, and we lived in there for a while.
What did she do?
She cooked at night the midnight meal for the men who worked the night shift. They'd come out to eat.
Did she also raise her own food?
I don't remember at that particular time whether there was any room for a garden or not in that area.
Did you have cows, chickens, things like that?
Not then, no: bought everything from the commissary that we needed.
Do you remember what your father did in the ore mine?
No, I don't. He probably did maintenance work because of the nature of
his work—he was a carpenter. And I think he was what we would call a
jack-leg electrician. I think he worked as maintenance, because that's
what
Do you remember that mine? I mean, do you remember how it was?
I can remember in my mind; I can see how it looked with the steamshovels digging out the side of the mountain. Big steamshovels dug up the ore and loaded it onto the cars and brought it into what they called the washer, where it was washed. It was all right out in the open, right near the area where, I guess, there was a dozen houses.
Who did the washing?
I remember seeing young twelve and fourteen year old boys sitting by this belt; they'd look for rocks and things and throw them out before it went into the crusher.
Did any women work there?
No, no women worked around there.
When did you start to school?
My first year at school was there. I don't remember whether they just allowed me to come or whether I was actually enrolled in school. But I did go to the little old school there that was for these children, the people who worked in the mine.
The school was just for the children that worked in the mine?
Or ones who lived in that area.
You were just four years old, though.
Yes, I was between four and five years old. My sister went, and I may
have just gone along because she went. They used to be not too strict
about the younger children coming. But I did go to school there, because
I remember the first poem [laughter]
Do you remember anything about the school?
Yes, an old one-room schoolhouse. In north Georgia we used to pick up (I was trying to think of what this was the other day), us kids near the school picked up . . . it looked like diamonds. What are they called? Quartz?
Yes.
And there were a lot of them; it must have been pertaining to the ore and the type of ground. The kids would say: "Oh, if you get a shoe-box full of these you can send them off and get you a watch." You know, the fancies of kids! We used to gather them at recess and after school, and dig for these shiney little rocks.
Right. I remember we used to dig for sassafras roots.
Well we did; my mother was a great sassafras drinker. And every spring we had to have sassafras along with our poke salad (that was a wild green). The mountain people particularly gathered a lot of wild greens to supplement their diet, because most people back in those days lived mostly on cornbread and peas. My mother used to enjoy going into the mountains and picking the wild greens. They have a thing called (and I like it today—they cultivate it, by the way, in Tennessee and Virginia) highland creeces. Oldtimers called them creecy-greens.
Never heard of them.
I don't know if you've read these Foxfire books now;
well, it speaks of all those greens that my mother. . . . I bought all
of the books so my grandchildren would have them, because I learned
about them by eating them when I was a kid. My mother knew all those
wild greens: dandelion,
Well, tell me about your grandparents, your father's family.
Very little I know. Most of what I know is from what I heard from my sister talking [Clara Pringle], because, as I say, we left that area when I was five years old. And I don't suppose I went back for any length of time until years later.
But your grandfather was from Tennessee?
Yes, my grandfather.
Your paternal grandfather?
Yes, was from Tennessee. And my grandmother got acquainted
She was from Dalton?
Dalton, Georgia.
But you never knew that grandfather?
No, no, because he passed away when my father and his brothers and his one sister were real young. And my grandmother came back there because she had no way to provide. And my father as a young man went to work on the farm with his cousin and lived with his uncle and farmed. His oldest brother worked on the railroad, and he must have went to work quite young. And he lost a leg on the railroad.
Your father did?
No, my uncle; my father never worked on the railroad.
Right.
Then later he cooked. You know these camp cars, they called them? After he lost his leg he cooked for the crew on these work cars; you know, they slept and ate on the cars, and went up and down repairing the track for a certain distance. Then he later opened a restaurant in Dalton, Georgia.
What was your grandfather's name?
I don't know my grandfather McGill's name; if I ever knew I have forgotten it.
What about your grandmother McGill?
My grandmother, her name was Nancy Elizabeth Loner, L-o-n-e-r.
OK, so your grandfather died and your grandmother came back to be with her people in Georgia; and your father went to live with who?
Luke Loner.
Luke Loner? Did he have to quit school young to do that work? Or do you know when he quit school?
I don't know, no. Then he had a younger brother Robert who stayed in Tennessee (or if he came back to Georgia he went back to Tennessee) with some of the relatives there. I believe he stayed with a cousin called Tommy McGill around Gray, Tennessee.
Is that when your father learned carpentry? How did he learn carpentry? Do you know?
Well, he learned carpentry by learning from some worker, or apprenticing
to someone else. He built barns and houses. He always worked as a
carpenter, to my knowledge. I remember, he told me one time about early
life, getting him a job in the cotton mill in Dalton. I know he was
laughing and talking about the language that people used [laughter] [laughter]
Did he see cotton mill work or people who worked in cotton mills as being not as well accepted?
Well, no, I don't think that; my father just didn't like it—the lint and
all got to him. Then I think he tried briefly coal mining in Tennessee a
little bit. And he told me then that he couldn't stand being closed in.
He told me he got him a job one time and tried to work in the mines with
one of his cousins; and he said you had to lay in water. He said the
What about your mother's family?
I don't know too much about them. My mother's father was John Wilson, and my grandmother died before I was born (my grandmother Wilson).
What did they do for a living?
Farmed, yes; my grandfather was a farmer, a very good farmer. Had what we
called a little bit of "bottom land"; people in the mountains thought
that if they had a little bit of bottom land they were a little better
off than the people who had to farm the hillside. He had a farm laying
right in there between Resaca post office and Nance's Spring, on each
side of the railroad. And my mother and her brothers (back then the
trains burned wood, when she was growing up),
Her parents were part Cherokee, weren't they?
Yes, both of them.
Both her parents?
Descended from Cherokee indians.
Do you remember them talking about that?
My mother did; she was very proud of it. She always liked to refer back;
every chance she got she'd tell people that she was part Cherokee Indian
[laughter]
Why was that?
I don't know; she just felt like, I reckon, that she was different
How many children did your maternal grandmother have? How many brothers and sisters did your mother have?
Twelve—no, there weren't twelve. Jess, Charlie, Doc, Rena, and the one that died, Momma and Aunt Mae.
A lot of children, then.
Seven. Her oldest brother Jess had twelve. Florence, eight! I'm forgetting them. Florence is the only one remaining alive now.
What about your mother's education?
She had no education; none of them ever went to school.
None of her brothers or sisters?
Never, except the younger ones. Aunt Florence had a fairly good. . . . I don't even know if she finished grammar school or not. She and Aunt Rena were the only ones that I remember could even read and write. Even Uncle Charlie, who was younger than Momma. . . . If there were any schools around there when Momma and them were growing, I never heard of it. A lot of times they'd have a school in a church, you know, in the winter months, because the school had to let out when the kids had to farm. It was not a nine months' schoolterm, even back then around in the rural area up there. And most of the people worked on the farm and they weren't encouraged to go to school, unfortunately.
Did your mother work in the fields?
Yes, she liked it. As long as she lived she always liked the outside.
She didn't work inside, do the housework?
No.
Did all the kids work?
Yes, all the kids had to help out and work. Momma, though, was the only girl that worked in the field. She preferred it that way. Aunt Mae was the housekeeper, and Aunt Mae was older. And, of course, the other girls were younger. And when my grandmother passed away my mother had married, at the age of seventeen, and the unmarried children and my grandfather came and lived . . . or, rather, my father and mother moved in the house with my grandfather and looked after the younger children until they married and left the home.
And so they sent the younger children to school, the younger brothers and sisters?
Yes. The two younger sisters, Aunt Florence and Aunt Rena, they did get to go to school pretty much.
How did your mother feel about not being able to read and write? Was she self-conscious about that?
No, she wasn't. I think she would love to have known how, but she was very clever. Anything she wanted to know she asked my Dad. My Dad read to her an awful lot.
He read out loud to her from books?
Yes, the Bible—both of them were very religious and attended church.
Anything she wanted to know she asked Poppa—very quietly [laughter]
Did your father ever try to teach her to?
No, and I've often wondered about that. And I'm ashamed of myself today. Maybe when I was going to school, a lot of times it was just me and her at home alone; I could have probably helped her. Maybe I was too embarrassed, or maybe I didn't want to embarrass her by asking her if I could teach her.
Right. Do you know when your mother and father were born?
I'd have to look up; we've got an old family Bible that's got all that in it, but I swear I can't remember. Let's see: Momma died when she was sixty-eight.
When was that?
I believe she died in '55. Poppa was sixty-three, and he died in 1946.
What were your father and mother's names?
Momma's name was Mary Rachael Sue Ann, and Poppa was Joseph Hamilton.
Joseph Hamilton McGill. Now how many kids did they have?
Two, my sister and I; my older sister, seven years older.
She was born in 1905?
Yes, I guess so.
And you were born in 1911.
Yes.
Your mother only had the two children then? But she raised her. . . .
Oh, we had from time to time cousins living with us, because my mother's
oldest brother passed away and he had twelve children. And my
Oh I see, they came down to Gadsden.
Yes, they lived in Gadsden and went to school—stayed with us and went to school.
Did your father read to you when you were a kid?
No, seems like I've been reading all my life.
Really? Do you remember when you started reading?
No, but I just can't remember when I couldn't read.
But you don't remember his reading out loud?
No. But he read to Momma; he'd read her the newspaper. We always took a
newspaper; I don't even remember when we ever didn't have a newspaper
come into the house. When he was short Poppa got ahold of books. I
remember an old blue-backed speller (and we still have it; my sister
still
What do you remember about your childhood in Sugar Valley?
Very little. Yes, I can remember I was about four years old, maybe three and a half. . . . I'm just guessing, because we moved to Alabama when I was five. And since then I remember fairly well, because I was very sick the first winter me moved to Gadsden (I had pneumonia and measles, and was very sick). And from then on I can remember vividly.
Now how did you father decide to move to Gadsden?
Well there was no work.
But how did he find a job there? Did he have relatives already there?
My uncle first went there, my mother's brother Charlie, and went to work for Gulf State Steel Company.
So he helped your father get a job there, or told him something?
Well, he told him he might get. . . . So we went down and he went to work, just before World War I.
And what exactly did he do for Gulf State Steel Company?
He was a carpenter, maintenance, you know. You know those blast furnaces then (I don't know if they have to now, they may have got some changes in the way they smelt the ore), when they'd burn out inside, to be relined the carpenters had to go in there and build forms. And then they had to repair tressles and keep the tracks around in the plant, in the steel mills. Most steel mills have train tracks through there to take the ore in. Well, just a lot of carpentry work has to go on around a steel mill.
Was building the forms dangerous work?
Well, it could be. I remember one night (Poppa was working nights) he went into the furnace to start, and evidently they hadn't cooled down enough. And someone turned some steam on, and he was pretty badly hurt. They brought him out, and he had a scar on his head; it looked like when the doctor sewed it up he left coal dust, and he had a black mark across there. Evidently he didn't clean it; that's what I thought, that maybe they didn't clean it good enough when they sewed it up.
Did you go to school then in Gadsden?
Yes, and I was frightened—we all were. I can remember, every time there was an accident in the steel plant they'd blow the whistle. A lot of people back in those days did not have time clocks in their homes, and everything then blew a whistle for starting time: the textile mill did. They'd blow a whistle for a certain length of time and let you know you had so much time to get there; then the whistle blew for work time. Then it blew for lunch and for coming back after lunch, and at quitting time. But if the whistle blew other than that we knew there had been an accident, and it used to frighten me. I'd be in school and I'd hear that whistle, and it used to frighten me to death, because you heard it a lot. But that was the only time my father was ever injured.
You started to school, then, in Gadsden? I mean, you kept on to school in Gadsden?
Yes, that's right.
What do you remember about going to school? What was the school like then?
Oh, it was a very good school, and the land was donated by
Did you go to high school?
I sure did, and I enjoyed it. We never resented having to clean up,
because we were proud of it. [Interruption]
Did you live in the mill village?
No. First we lived in a rented house, then we lived in a steel plant house in the steel plant village—company-owned house. My Dad liked to be close to work; we moved within two blocks of the gate he had to go in to work.
But the kids from the steel village and from the mill village all went to school together at Dwight School?
Yes, yes. That was the only school.
Did you feel a difference between the different kinds of kids? And were there different heirarchies or class at all?
No, no. We all went to school together. Frankly, I can only remember two students in my class that came from the mills. And as I think back now I just wonder if they didn't go to school, or why I can only remember two children that went to school in my class. And of course I had a cousin, Kathleen Loner, whose father was a superintendent of the mill, and my grandmother's nephew. She was a grade ahead of me, and they lived in a big house where the supervision of the mill had a separate place in the village that they lived. And it was right up on the hill near the school.
They had a nicer house, then?
Yes. [laughter]
Were there some kids in the school that were better off than others?
Oh yes. In my class there was Sue Frances Shaddix, whose
So you really played with children from all different. . . .
That's right. We always managed to sit close together in class, Mabel and Sue Frances. Mabel and Sue Frances didn't get along too good, for some reason or another; I think their mothers clashed and were a little bit jealous of each other. I was closer to Sue Frances than I was Mabel, because she was kind of a timid, shy person and I always'd kind of be protective of Sue Frances. Then I had two very good friends, Italian girls who lived near us that went to school with us; their fathers worked in the mill.
Were there blacks working in this steel mill?
Yes, some blacks, not many.
Men or women?
During World War I, yes, there were some black women working
They were actually doing. . . ?
Yes, because they'd come out, they were. . . . In the summer time I used to take my father's lunch to the plant gate, and he'd come out and get it; sometimes he'd come out and sit down on the grass and eat. My mother'd always taken him to the plant gate a hot meal at noon, and in the summer I took it.
What about the mill?
Cotton mill?
Yes. Did people bring lunches up to people who worked in the mill?
I don't know, because they worked a little different than the . . . . That's when they worked twelve hour day they had a lunch period, but they stopped off at noon.
I remember you talking about passing the mill walking to school, and seeing the. . . .
. . . The older children bringing the little children out. Yes, the mothers would come out on the grass and nurse the babies.
At a certain time in the day?
Yes.
When?
As I remember it they'd come out at ten and two. I'd see that mostly in the summer, because I had a friend who lived in the cotton mill village and in the summertime I used to visit her. The mill was run by steam and it had a big lake, and she and I used to sit on the side of that lake and read books. That's when I remember mainly seeing these women come out and sit out on the grass to nurse the babies.
Later on did that custom cease, when you were working in the mill?
I don't know; oh no, it didn't happen, I didn't see it. I worked nights;
I only worked a very short time on day time. The boss tricked me. He
came around one day and asked me whether I'd work nights for thirty days
and he'd put me back on the day shift. He told me a lie; I never did get
back on days [laughter]
What did you like in school? What interested you?
Everything.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Never thought about it.
You never did?
No.
Did you have any sense of your parents' wanting you to be something?
No, no.
But they were clear about wanting you to go to school?
Oh yes, yes.
Did they want you to finish high school?
Yes. It was the worst thing that ever happened when Poppa wasn't able to let me go on to school.
What about your sister? Did she go to school?
She never cared too much about it. She never read. She's just different
from me. She just wanted to quit school and go to work, when she didn't
really have to. She just didn't like school; she quit school and went to
work in the hosiery mill when she was fourteen. But I would like
So when did you first become aware of unions and union activity?
Oh, when I was about seven years old, when the activity started around Gadsden during World War I. There was quite a bit of union activity. My mother went to all the union rallies when she heard of them; we'd get on the street car and go.
You mean not even whether your father was involved or not?
My father had to work; he never was off during the times we'd have these little rallies, unless it was on Saturday or Sunday. He didn't dare go; if he was seen there, you know, he was likely to get fired, because most of the people who went were people who were already in the unions. There were no laws in those days, no protective laws whatsoever; you had no chance. And if you valued your job, why, you were very careful. It had to be done very quietly. But some of the men who had, you know, already obtained recognition, they attended.
What kind of organizing was going on around Gadsden during the war?
The Textile Workers were organizing the Dwight Mills; the Amalgamated
Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers were trying to organize the
Gulf State Steel; and the Iron Molders and the Founders; and I don't
know what union it was (I assume it was the Car Repairmen) in what we
called the car works. There was a plant in Gadsden that made railroad
freight cars (boxcars, they were called), and it was called the car
works. There were two stove foundaries, one in Attalla and one in
Gadsden. Now
Was your sister involved in the hosiery union?
Yes, she joined at the hosiery mill. Then she later worked in an overall plant there for a while that was unionized. But she was a knitter; they made socks, not full-fashion hosiery. There's a lot of difference in full-fashion knitting and seamless knitting. Back then all the fashionable hose had seams.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
She was active mainly because the man that she was going with was very active in organizing in the car works. Mainly, I think, it was because of his interest that she had interest, because later she seemed to lose all interest in unions—in fact, tried to discourage me when I first joined. It was actually a fear of me losing my job, I guess. She was the only one in the whole family that tried to discourage me from it.
But her boyfriend was very. . . ?
At that time, yes.
What about your father?
Well, he was active to an extent, but they never got going as good in the steel mills at that time as they did some other places. For some reason or other they just couldn't get enough interest. My father joined, because I remember the first time that we had a discussion in the house. As I remember, we came in; my mother had been to a Labor Day rally (had a big barbacue and a parade and speaking, and we had been there). I guess it was the first time I'd really paid attention to the speaking.
What were the Labor Day parades like? Could you tell me a little bit more about the parades?
Oh yes, they were very elaborate, as I remember it—might not be considered elaborate today. But they'd have flat-bed trucks, and like if a man was a blacksmith he'd be up there doing his job on this truck. And if somebody'd have a sewing machine or a knitting machine. . . . The bricklayers would be laying brick, and the carpenters hammering—on each float.
Were there women on the floats?
Oh, there were a few women, because the textile, as I said. . . . The mill came out on strike during that, because they lost the strike and lost out entirely in the Dwight Mill. We had a neighbor that was very active in that strike. There were some women in the overall factory, which had a union contract. And I can't remember, it didn't last very long; that overall plant closed down and went out of business right after the boom. And most of the unions that were organized in the foundaries and in the mills (well, they never got a contract in Dwight Mill, but in the hosiery mill and in the overall factory) right after the war was over and, I guess, the labor supply got a little more plentiful, the companies were able to defeat the unions, and they lost out. And they didn't revive up until in the thirties.
But you came back from a Labor Day parade?
Yes, we came back in the afternoon and were eating supper, and I remember
very distinctly saying, "Well Poppa, what is a union?" And he said,
"Well, I'll tell you: a union is an organization of people getting
together to try to better their working conditions. Now," he said, "I
carry a union card, but don't tell anybody, because the union's not
recognized where I work and I'd lose my job." And I never told anyone.
He told me, I remember [laughter]
So you were very much aware of unions, and saw unions as a good thing, and admired your father for being involved in the unions very young?
Yes, and admired this man my sister went with. He was a good bit older
than her, and he was a big influence on me too at that time because of
his activity. He was very much in the front; in fact, they had a warrant
out for his arrest and he had to leave the state. And he never came back
[laughter]
What did they think he had done? What was he accused of doing?
Well, there was some dynamite in the car works office, I suppose, that went off and destroyed part of the office. And he was among the ones that they had warrants out for, accusing them of being involved.
And he left the state?
He left to avoid prosecution; and he never came back to work in Alabama again, because in the thirties when we started organizing around he was still active in the union, in the railroad brotherhoods. He went to work out of Jacksonville, Florida for Seaboard Railroad. And he came to Birmingham one time on a meeting, during the time we were having it, and he came out to see us. Of course at that time I was very involved in trying to organize textiles.
Did he realize he had had such an influence on you?
Oh yes. Then I saw him later on while I was in Jacksonville one time, and I called him and went out to his home and had supper with him.
What was his name?
Lelus Waddell—L-e-l-u-s Waddell.
So how did you happen to start your first job?
Well, this friend of mine Dorothy Stringer, they were having (her sister, who of course had children, and she had her mother-in-law there, and Dorothy and her brother lived there), they were having a pretty hard time making ends meet, and Dorothy felt the need to try to help supplement the income so she was going to get her a job in the mill during the summer. And she talked me into going up. Dorothy was about a year older than I was, maybe two, and I was only fourteen (big for my age). They didn't question you back then if you told them you were. . . . Well, if you were sixteen, to go to work you had to have a school permit to prove you were sixteen, so I told them I was seventeen, so I'd avoid having to prove it—because I couldn't prove it, I was only fourteen.
Were there a lot of people working in the mills at fourteen?
I guess so. I know I did; they never questioned it.
But the mill required a school permit?
If you were sixteen you had to prove you were sixteen. [laughter]
How did your parents feel about your going to work that summer?
Well, Poppa never did want me particularly to work in a textile mill, I
guess because of that first experience he had in one. And he swore
Was she against you working there too?
Well, not as much as my father was. He'd make statements that no child of his would ever work in a cotton mill.
Why was that?
I don't know, I guess that first experience. He just thought it was unhealthy. Well, a lot of cotton mill workers back in those days were looked down on; a lot of good people, but they were just looked down on for some reason or another in those areas where there weren't many textile. . . . I don't know why. Maybe it was because so many of the kids worked in there and never got an education; they seemed to be looked down on if they weren't people who wanted to do better. I don't know, people just thought if you worked in a textile mill that there wasn't much to you.
I wonder what he wanted you to do?
I have no idea.
He thought you would get married and not work?
No, they threw a fit when my sister got married. I don't know; I reckon they thought we'd stay home the rest of our lives. I mean, they didn't want my sister to marry, and she married when she was eighteen.
Why didn't they want her to marry?
I don't know; I was only eleven years old at the time, and I know that they didn't. I guess they thought she was maybe too young, I don't know—although my mother was married at seventeen. But people married earlier, I guess, back then.
Exactly how did you get the job then? The two of you just. . . ?
Yes, you almost had to, yes. No, not with my cousin who was a superintendent, because I never did let him know who I was.
How could he not know who you were?
Well, you see, my grandmother passed away, and there for several years we didn't have no. . . . He used to come to our house and visit when my grandmother came to visit. Well, we were separate from them; they lived on one side of town and we lived the other. And since then I grew up. He used to come through the mill and stand and look at me, and I think he was wondering if he didn't know me. But I'd go on just like I didn't see him.
Why didn't you want to let him see you?
I don't know, I just don't have no idea; I guess I didn't want the people to know that . . . or I was afraid maybe he'd know how old I was, and that I shouldn't really be in there. Well I remember, he used to come through—well, he didn't come through much because he was superintendent (you know, the head man there)—and, my God, I guess there were two thousand people who worked there, you know, with two shifts. It was a huge place: from the gate of the mill to my station where I went to work, it was two blocks. It was a huge mill.
Well, how did you get the job then?
Dorothy knew somebody, and she arranged for us to get the job.
And what did you do, exactly?
Spin the yarn. You know, it goes through carding, and then it runs in what they called warping (and it's coming like a roll of cotton onto a spool). Then it comes through this bunch of rollers and it's twisted into yarn. I have to say I wasn't very good at it; I never did like it.
How did you learn your job? How were you trained?
They would put you with someone for a day or two, and then they'd just put you out there on your own.
Just for a couple of days? That's all the time it took to learn?
To show you how. They didn't pay you.
You weren't paid while you were learning?
They paid you when they considered you sufficiently trained to go on the payroll. And in my case I worked six weeks before they started paying me, and Dorothy did too. And for the first fifty-six hours of work I got $3.16, but we had to pay for ice. They charged us ten cents a week for ice. I never had no ice water, but we had to pay ten cents a week (they took it out of our paycheck) to buy ice. Had a big thing up here with coils, and they put the ice in there, and it was supposed to run out and give us ice water. Well, you had to take glasses to drink in if you drank, or a lot of times you'd fold up paper and drink out of it. They didn't have fountains; it came out in a spigot. But I never had no ice water, because they never had any ice in there; I never saw any ice water, but we paid a dime a week for ice. And a penny out of every dollar we made went for the company doctor; whether we used him or not we had to pay for the company doctor. I never used him, but I paid a penny. So I had $3.03 left.
$3.03. A week?
Yes, I made $3.16 for the first week they paid me; I paid a dime for ice and three cents.
How much did you make after that first week?
Well, three or four dollars. They paid you so much an hour (you didn't
get paid piecework), so I don't remember making any more than
Now how could they make a stipulation like that?
Well, I assume to assure that there would be employment there. During that first time I worked there the thirty years was up and the mill closed down and retooled. It was down for a good long while.
Who donated the land?
The Agricola family. It was closed down (I forget) over thirty days; it was closed down a pretty good while.
So you were just all laid off and not paid?
Yes. No one worked, except maybe people in there setting up machinery and stuff. And it was retooled. Now when we left there to go out it was the boom years (about 1928), and I had gotten up to $18. a week, and that was an unheard of amount.
Eighteen dollars a week?
Yes.
Now this was about 1925?
No, no; I went to work there in '25.
How long did you work in that first period?
I guess a couple of years, yes, because it was during the time there that
thirty years was up. And they shut the mill down, and it actually
changed hands; they brought in new management. My Uncle Jim lost his job
with the company. They brought in an entirely new set-up—I mean, top
management. A lot of the supervisors in the plant stayed on, because the
supervisor I
Now how had it changed?
Well, the type of yarn. You see, I had been working on what we called "big yarn" that went to the warpers, and that was easier for me to do. Well, when I went back in there it was small yarn, and we had four bobbins up here that fed in, where I used to have one up here and one down here. I now had two up here and two down here that fed in to make the finer yarn. And it was going to be harder for me to do, I saw that. So I asked what they were going to pay; and they had cut us down to $7.50 a week.
From $18. down to $7.50?
For twelve hours of work, sixty hours a week. See, you didn't even stop to eat.
No lunch?
At night no stopping off to eat; you worked six to six (six o'clock at night to six in the morning). You ate on the run.
Any breaks at all?
No breaks. So when he told me that I just walked out.
What did you say?
I just didn't say nothing; I just walked out. That's when I said to the boss, "What're you going to pay me?" He was standing there talking to me, and I said, "How much is this going to pay?" And he told me, and I said, "Well, good-bye," and walked out the door.
So at this time my mother and father were living down just a little ways
from Gadsden in a place called Steel
Let me go back just a little bit. Summer came to an end; you planned just to work there for the summer and go back to school in the fall. But when fall came your father had lost his job at the mill, right?
Right; well, he'd already been out of the steel mill, but this job he was on played out. He'd already lost his job in the steel mill just previously to that, and then he got this job with the Alabama Power.
Building dams?
Working on the dams.
And so he had left Gadsden and was moving around, and you moved in with your aunt?
Yes; no, Momma and me stayed there, and he came home once in a while then, when I was first working. When I got the job in the mill he was already working for the Alabama Power, but me and Momma were still living at the same place. We had to move out of the company house, but we were still living there. When you lose your job you had to move out of the house; you couldn't stay in the house no more once you didn't work for the company.
Well, when you saw that you weren't going to be able to go back to school in the fall, was that a big thing? I mean, were you unhappy about that?
It was with me, yes; I was very unhappy.
How was that decision made? Your sister was working, right?
Well, the man my sister married was in Birmingham; she moved to Birmingham when she married.
Would she contribute any money to the family?
No, no, no.
Who decided that you should keep on working? Was it you or was it your father?
Well, I guess it was me, and they didn't resist because a paycheck was needed, some money coming in. So I went home.
Yes, down to Steel?
Yes.
After you lost your job?
So my aunt wrote me a letter and told me that Osko Cochrane, the boss,
had seen her in the grocery store and asked where I was; and she told
him. And he said, "Well, get in touch with her and tell her to come back
to work, but to talk to me before she comes—if she wants to work." He
knew I needed to work, and he was a friend of the family (his sister and
my mother were very close—lived next door to each other—and we knew him,
you know.) So he worked nights, of course, like I did, so I went over to
his house, and his niece went with me (we were good friends). We went
over to his house and he was just getting up as he slept days. He told
me, "You come on in. You're going to have to talk to [his nickname was
"Wild Bill," but I can't remember [laughter]
At $7.50?
Yes, yes.
Did anybody else react the way you did when they went back and saw the changes?
No, no, no.
There wasn't a lot of grumbling or people quitting? Or most people just said OK and did what they were told to do?
I don't know; I just know what I did. I didn't talk to nobody.
Who were the new owners of the mill? Did it change ownership?
It changed again later, so I don't remember who. It still went by the name of Dwight Mills, but I think some bigger textile company took it over. As I remember it, when I went there it was kind of locally . . . it was just Dwight Mills. And later at the beginning of that period when the mills began to combine and go into bigger companies. . . . And it changed later; when it was last operated it was Cone Mills.
Do you remember efficiency experts?
That's when the Bidot system came in, the stretch-out came in there about that time. The Bidot system, they called it.
Bidot?
Yes, it was a Frenchman named Bidot.
You were a part of it?
Yes, it was part of this business that cut my wages—give us more sides to run and stretched out the weavers.
The weavers were always considered the aristocrats in textile, and I
remember they used to talk about they needed roller skates to watch all
their looms, you know. Yes,
What about spinning? I thought spinning was a fairly skilled task in a textile mill? Is it not one of the. . . ?
Well, it's not as skilled as weaving. Weaving's the most, I think; it was higher paid than any other, as I remember it, among the jobs. Women mostly, but a lot of men were weavers; very few women, as I remember it, were in weaving. And I tried to get away from spinning so I could get into something else. I always considered my hands were too big and I was too tall for a spinner—I had to stoop too much, you see, to get down. I was not cut out to be a spinner. And I never could get transferred out into nothing else. I asked to be going into winding (felt I could do better) or the warping, where you had to reach high to take the big spools and put it on this frame, and it run down into a big bin that run the warping to go down into the weaving room. And I always figured I'd be better off there. It looked sensible to me to put me over in something like that (me and my height), but I never could talk them into it. I never was able to move; they just wouldn't transfer you, hardly.
Well, were there a lot of other women and children working in that mill?
No children when I was in there.
A lot of women?
Oh, all of us were women; all of the spinners were women. Spinners, spoolers, warpers—all women, and in the card room a lot of women.
After you quit school and were working there full-time, working the night
shift, did your social life revolve around the mill and the people
No, never associated, I never associated with the people in the mill. I just lived in a different part of town, and Dorothy (the girl who worked with me) and I still had the same friends. I never associated.
And there wasn't any . . . ?
Not because I felt any different, but because I just didn't live . . . my friends were different, and I just still associated with the same people that I'd gone to school with.
And while you were at work there wasn't really any time to get acquainted with people; there weren't any breaks.
No, no, you didn't have no time to talk, no. You didn't get to talk; you yelled at each other through the room if you talked to somebody. You didn't get time to leave your job and go nowhere else, I guarantee you; there was no idle time.
What about the lint and noise?
Oh, it was terrific; I couldn't stand it. I hated every day I ever spent in there.
Really?
It was uncomfortable.
How did you get through the day? I mean, twelve hours standing!
Well, you had to; you had to eat, you had to live, you needed the money.
What did you do? I mean, what did you think about while you were standing? How did your mind work in order to get yourself to stay in there?
You didn't have no time to think; you were watching those ends, and if they'd break down you had to be there to put them back up.
You had to really concentrate on your job?
You had to concentrate on that job.
It never got to be just automatic? You had to really concentrate?
Oh no, no, you had to watch it. You had to set in your roving, you had to clean those machines; you had to clean all your cleaning, pick rollers. You had to pick out lint, take the clapboards, they called them, (boards that you put on the top of the rollers), take them off, you had to clean those things twice a day. You had to wipe and clean all under that roving and keep those machines clean—plus you had to run the machines. And I guarantee that it was tough.
What would happen if you got behind?
We used to call it getting "stuck up." There were so many ends coming down; the machines would run on. An end would break—maybe a slub would come through and break the end. It would break off coming through the . . . sometimes the roving wouldn't be right. It would be too weak and it would break before it even got in to the roller. Well, when that broke down it didn't bother you, because it just meant you'd have a less spool to pick up. But cotton didn't just come out and ball up. But you had rollers under there that caught the cotton when an end would break, and the roving would keep coming through. Well, if you didn't get there pretty quick so much would get around there that it would fall out and tear all those others down, and then you'd call yourself getting "stuck up."
And what would happen? What would you do? Would that hold up other people?
Well, you could not catch up unless you had help. Well, I had a couple of
good people that were good spinners near me, and they helped me
But they would help you when you got "stuck up"?
One lady in there, the day shift woman, used to have all my cleaning up done when I got in there.
Why?
She just liked me, and was sorry for me. She was an older woman. And
she'd have my rollers picked and cleaned out one of the roving before
I'd get in there in the afternoon. Of course, during the night I had to
do it again [laughter]
What about your boss, I guess it'd be your straw boss that was right over you? How did they treat you? What were they like?
I never had any trouble with them because, like say Osko Cochrane, he knew me as a kid. And while they didn't make it no easier on me they didn't ever. . . . I've heard them curse women in there and talk to them like dogs, but they never did me that way. I heard language that I'd never heard in my life when I went in that mill; I'd never heard no such terms and profanity and vulgarity and just downright what people'd call gutter talk—things I'd never heard that I heard.
Was this the bosses talking to the women?
Bosses and the people too; they'd talk in front of you and everybody.
Did the women talk back to the bosses?
No, no, very few ever talked back. But they'd just curse you; and I mean, they'd just curse you, when they got mad at you about the job. But, as I say, I never had no trouble; Osko knew me as a child, and he didn't talk to me that way if he had to get on me. I know he has had to get on me a time or two about something, because I wasn't too good at my job. But still he didn't talk to me like that. In fact, I never heard Osko talk to nobody like that, but I did hear some section bosses, what's called section bosses.
How would the women respond to being talked to like that?
Well, they just had to take it.
Did they complain to each other, or did you hear them talk?
I guess they just took it as a matter of course, that that was life. Well, not at that time I didn't hear anything.
Well, along in there you had a brief excursion into marriage.
Yes, but I'm going to leave all that out. I don't want to, because I've always left it out. Like I said, you know, I've had two marriages, but I'd just rather not go into them, because to me it played such a minor part—except I had a son out of the first marriage, which I've very proud of. I'm glad I did, and had the child. But it was such a brief thing, you know. I mean, the marriage was unfortunate; the only good thing is that I have a son out of it that I'm very proud of. It's uneventful as far as my life's concerned; it didn't affect my life except that I had the son.
But that was when you were about sixteen?
Yes, I was sixteen; he was born when I was seventeen. And I quit work, of course, when I found out I was pregnant, and went back home. My Dad had a job then, and I went back home and stayed until . . . well, I actually never left. Yes, I did leave home again, because my Dad and Mother moved on the farm; I continued to work.
How did your parents respond to your having a baby and your marriage and everything?
Well, when they'd found out that I'd married (of course, a lot of my friends were doing those silly things back then), and they didn't know it until it'd done happened, they were very unhappy about it, but there was nothing they could do. And I became pregnant right off the bat; of course, they were very happy about the child.
Is that right?
Yes, yes. I'll say this, my son's had a very happy life and my mother and father are responsible for it, because I had to work to make a living. They raised him for me, and he got the very best of care. I don't know what I would have done; I couldn't have been able to travel and take a job with the union had I not had a mother and a father who. . . .
Is that your only child?
Yes. And also my sister and her first husband separated along about that time, and they had her children; and they were all raised together, kind of like brothers and sisters.
Is that right?
Yes.
So, let's see. You quit your job when the retooling came, and you went back, and then had the baby. When did you. . . ?
See, I went back to work, and I didn't work very long and then I had to quit because of that. Then we went to south Alabama with Momma. After I quit work, see, me and Momma moved down with Poppa. Momma stayed with me as long as I worked there.
I thought you lived with your aunt?
Well, I did, though that's when I came back and went to work the second
time. You see, I'd already had the child. It may be a little confusing,
but when I quit that time I already had the child. I was living with my
aunt and I quit, and Poppa was working then. You see, I'd already had
the child and he was about a year old; but he was with my mother and
father and I was staying with my aunt and helping her. Actually, I was
helping her and her two children; I was not giving a penny to my mother
and father at that time,
Let me ask you just a couple of back questions. Before that when you were working, how did you spend your money, I mean, during that first summer and then. . . ?
Well, when my Dad worked. . . . What can you spend? Three dollars?
Did you give your money to your parents?
No, the summer I worked and Pa was working I just blowed it in. What can
you do with three dollars [laughter]
It was hardly worth . . . working.
Well, the only thing I can say is it's a dang good thing I had some
experience, so when this Depression come on. . . . There was a lot of
people that couldn't get a job. I know that I helped a woman; the
Depression come on and she came to work where we were at Selma
Manufacturing Company. And she told a story and said she was
experienced, and she wasn't. And this boss I had (who I'll get to later
in my union activities) was a very nice person. And he came to me and
said, "Eula, this lady over here has come in and told she's experienced,
and she's not." He said, "I confronted her and found out. If she's ever
worked before she certainly has lost all ability to do the job." And he
said, "I hate to let her go, because she started
What about when you were coming up and starting to court and run around with. . . ?
Didn't do much of it.
You didn't?
No. I had only two boyfriends. I didn't start getting interested in courting at an early age like a lot of them did. Both good friends I had, Dorothy and Ethel (and I cannot think of Ethel's last name—this girl I was talking about whom I used to go over on the lake bank and read with), they were both older than I was. And we used to have parties at the community house, you know, play parties and serve refreshments. And that's the only time we'd ever. . . . You know, we'd go and, like, play these little old silly games. I remember a boy that went to school with me in my class, and me and him was good friends, but it wasn't like courting. He used to walk me home from the party, or if we'd have something in school he'd walk me home.
You didn't really have dates?
No.
What about after you quit school and started working? Did you start courting then?
Yes, that's what I was fixing to say. I guess I had two, one before my
son's father. I think that everybody was married and I thought that was
the thing to do; I wasn't too much interested in him [laughter]
OK, so how did you finally, then, quit your job at Dwight Mills and move to Birmingham? How did that come about?
Now, let me think for just a minute. I quit that one time and I went back. Do you know I just cannot remember that second time I quit. Oh, my sister came up there, yes, visiting her friend who came back up there, and she says, "Why don't you come stay with me and get you a job in Birmingham?" So I did. I was pretty much burdened down trying to help my aunt, to tell you the truth, and I didn't have nothing. Whatever I was making I was giving to her right then, because my Dad and Mother were living down there on that place and raising what they ate. And they had a cow, and then he was doing these buildings. So my sister came up there one day and saw: you know, here I was up there working this way. What future did I have? (She was a good bit older than me.) And here were my aunt and the two kids, and I guess she thought it was just a dead-end street; she said to me, "Why don't you come?" And so I quit and went and stayed with her. But I did the same thing for her, because she and her husband separated, and everything I made went to her. I had to to keep working, for her and us to eat.
But you got a job a Kresses, right, in Birmingham?
No; you know, that's another thing, you see. That brief encounter, I
worked at Kresses when we first came back to Birmingham the first time,
before we went back to Gadsden. See, that's the first job I had after my
son was born, when we came back from south Alabama to Birmingham. Worked
there, I guess, about six months. That's when Poppa run that little
restaurant out near the Selma Manufacturing Company. See, by Kresses
being in
Did you charge admission or something?
Yes. Well, there was a bunch of people that was having it at their house, and they got to talking to Poppa. They had like a club, a group of people—back then people made their own entertainment, pretty much. And they had been meeting and having these dances at the people's. . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . but just a group of people that liked to get together rather than go to people's houses. So Poppa built this place near the building where the. . . . See, we had a little grocery store, like, and a sandwich shop in there, and we lived in the back. It was a pretty good-sized place, and my sister and brother-in-law, we all lived together. And my brother-in-law worked in town; he was a plasterer, and he was working regular. And Poppa ran the place; and then twice a week we had the dances—and then anybody could come. But they were very nice affairs.
Did you have a local band?
Yes, the musicians come and they played for part of the admission, see.
How did you like working as a clerk in the department store, in comparison, say, to working in the cotton mill?
Well, the pay was about the same. It was in a way nicer than work in the
mill. Of course it wasn't any easier, in one term, because you had to
clean up every night after you left work. [Interruption]
You were talking about working behind the candy counter.
Yes. As I remember, we had to go into work at eight o'clock then; the store opened at eight and closed at six (we had a half an hour to eat)—except Friday and Saturday night we stayed open 'til nine. You had to work; you know, you worked from eight to nine at night, plus you had to clean up after you got through. You had to sweep behind the counter, clean up everything, replenish. You had cleaning jobs to do all during the week, too, if customers were scarce. And if you took any bad money, then you had to make it up. I remember a woman one time came in (and the candy counter was just at the end of the door) and she stood right at the end and gave me two Canadian dimes. I didn't notice them; they took it out of my pay for taking those two Canadian dimes.
So how did you start working for Selma Manufacturing?
Well, that's when my Dad and brother-in-law moved out there and started
this little store and sandwich shop and . . . dance hall, if you want to
call it that. And I was way on the other side of town, way over off of
north Birmingham—in fact, the place we were was out in Tarrant, Alabama.
[Interruption]
So you were telling me why you decided to start working for the Selma Manufacturing.
So I was out there, you know. At first I didn't work; I helped Poppa in the store and place. So one day I just decided to go over and see if they were putting on any hands, and got me a job. I guess that was about 1930, I imagine.
You were eighteen?
About eighteen, nineteen. So I was working there when we
What did you do there? What was your job?
I was spinning, because they made the sugar bags. I had to still do that; that was the only thing I knew to do. And I had to still do that because you had to tell them you were experienced to get a job, and I didn't have a chance to do anything else.
What about your wages?
You know, I can't remember what I made when I first went there. It must have been about four or five dollars a week. I remember there a time right after I went to work there in the winter, they didn't pay us all in money. As I remember it I was making six dollars a week, and they gave me three dollars and three dollars in script to spend at the A&P store, because they couldn't pay us all—just in the height of the Depression there, just before Roosevelt was elected. Then later, though, I was making $5.10 a week, because Joe came over to me one night and he had some black work running. I don't know, it was an experiment or something, but they had some black, and you couldn't hardly see it at night. He couldn't get nobody to stay over there; he told me if I'd go over there and run that black work that he'd help me out and he'd give me two dollars a week more. So when payday came I still had $5.10, and I was working sixty hours a week. So I went to him and said, "Where's my two dollar raise?" And he said, "What?" And I said, "You promised me two dollars if I'd stay over there on that black work." And he said, "Did I?" I said, "You know you did." "Well, I don't know how I'm going to fix it." I said, "Well, I'm expecting it." So I got two dollars a week more for that; and I was making $7.10 a week for sixty hours when the first minimum wage law came in under the NRA—twelve dollars a week for forty hours.
Did your wages go up when the minimum wage law came in?
Twelve dollars a week for forty hours. So I worked the second shift then, and they put on a third shift, see.
What were working conditions like there in comparison to your first job at Dwight Mills?
Terrible!
Worse?
Yes, because the company wasn't as good a company. They didn't keep their places clean. But so far as supervisors, I have had no trouble with supervision. I have to say that, I just didn't have any trouble per se with any personal clashes with the bosses, with my immediate supervisors.
Your supervisor there was . . . very helpful to you.
Yes.
Why was that?
I don't know, he just took a liking to me some way or another. I never missed any time from work, and I was never late. I couldn't miss no time. Some people did lay out; how they did it I don't know, but I never lost a day from work. I had to be there because I needed to work; if you didn't work you didn't get paid, so I had to be there. I needed the money, what little I got.
Did he treat you better than he did the other women?
Well, he was a pretty nice fellow to everybody, but I would say that he
did, by the fact of giving me the two dollars a week more—which he had
to finagle and fix some way or another, because they never would have
allowed it. I would say yes. I know when we started organizing he came
down and said, "I understand that they're trying to organize a union."
And I said,
They did the same work?
He laughed one day at me and said, "Hey, you going to get Rosa into the union?" And I said, "Yes, if she'll join." (She was one of the black women.) He said, "You going to call her sister?" I said, "Sure I'm going to call her sister; I work here with her, don't I?" And he just went on; that's the only thing he ever said to me.
Did you think of him as a friend of yours? Or was it that kind of. . .?
Well, not really friend; but I'd say this, that he seemed to have a little more respect for me than he did the other people, and he'd come down and chat with me.
I read all the time, and on the streetcar I had books to bring back and forth with me (because I had about an hour to spend on the streetcar coming and going to work). And he used to come down at night and pick up my book and read it while I was working, and bring it back to me just before I'd leave. Whatever I was reading, he'd come down and pick my book up. And then too, I always (I'm not saying this boasting) changed clothes; I never did wear on the streetcar what I worked in.
You mean after you'd get to work you'd change clothes, and then change clothes again?
Yes.
Why was that?
Well, because I didn't like to go on the streetcar like I. . . .
What kind of clothes did you wear to work in? Were they dirty?
Well, you'd get lint and you'd sweat (it was hot, hot), and I just didn't feel like getting on a streetcar with other people. And I guess, too, I didn't much want people to know that I was working in that type place—I don't know why, but I just did that.
Were there certain kind of clothes that people wore in the cotton mill that were distinct, so you could tell?
Well, just cotton dresses, yes. We all had to wear aprons to put our waist in. There were a few lockers back there in a corner, and he let me have one of those to keep my clothes in. And I guess I was the only one that changed.
Had he been a worker himself? Had he worked on the floor before he became a supervisor?
I don't know. He had worked somewhere else before he came there, in that type of work: he had to be, to learn it, because you had to know what you were doing.
Did you get any better at spinning?
No.
You still weren't any good at it?
No [laughter]
And you still had to do it?
No, I didn't like it. I was better than this friend of mine, though.
[laughter]
So you were working there when the '34 general strike came along? Can you tell me something about how you began to organize the union there? Who started it?
Well, for a long time they didn't want me to know it; they were afraid of me, you know, because I never associated with the people. I lived in another part of town, I had to travel by streetcar, and I never had any encounter with any of the people in the plant. I didn't know any of them, just except to see them at work. And you never had time to talk; like I said, you worked twelve hours, you quit working and you went home. On the weekends I never saw any of them, because I was on one side of town and they were on the other.
There was already a local there?
No. I'm trying to think there just a minute. Anyway, I did not know it
was started until the what we called section hand, he came to me one
night and said, "Did you know they're having a union meeting Saturday?"
(Now he was like a straw boss; he was eligible to join the union, but he
was borderline supervision and worker.) He had had an experience one
time; he was from up around Decatur, Alabama, where right in the
twenties they had a strike. And that railroad yard moved and the people
blamed the union with it. And he had worked in there, so he was kind of
against unions because of that experience.
This was Alice Berry?
Yes.
When you went to that first meeting, were these all people out of that mill, or was there an organizer there?
Out of that mill; that was the meeting for that mill.
Was there an organizer from the United Textile Workers Union there?
That's right, yes sir: John Dean and Albert Cox.
Ah, they were there at that meeting? And had they contacted and started that?
They had contacted some people, yes; it had been going on, but I didn't
know about it then. They told me later they were afraid to approach me,
because they didn't know how I felt. And because, I reckon, my sister
made clothes and her husband had a pretty good job, I was a little
better dressed and I changed clothes, they were a little bit leary of
me. They didn't know whether to let me know at the beginning or not. So
I was put on the organizing committee. And this same woman that I helped
train, she lived in a little place called Central Park near where I
lived in Ensley Highlands. And when we got to town we transferred to the
same streetcar to come out to the factory, and so one day I approached
her [laughter]
How many people did you have in the local union before the strike?
Well, you see, the minute you joined you started paying dues. We paid a dollar to join and twenty-five cents a week dues. And when we set up the local we had to have, I think, twenty-five people paying dues before we could set the local up—I believe it was twenty-five to get a charter. We set the local up and I was elected secretary-treasurer. We never had too many people pay dues; they just wouldn't pay, if they had it in the first place. But we acted just like a local.
Were these all women in this plant?
No, no, we had a good many men working: the doffers were men,
Who were the most active people in the local? Were they men or women? Weavers or spinners?
Both. We had some very good active men who had been in the unions before. We had one man who was section head who had been in a machinists' union, and he turned yellow on us in the strike—sold us out. Didn't sell us out, but. . . . And we had another man who was very active, and he chickened out on us too in the strike; his son didn't, his son stuck with us.
Who were the local officers?
I can't remember. There was a guy named Rogers who was president (I can't remember his first name), and I can't remember any of the other officers right now except him.
Were you the only woman officer?
I can't remember if I was the only woman or not; I don't think so. I believe Mabel Abson . . . was an officer, her or her brother. And then we had a Sicilian girl and her brother that were very active too working there; can't even remember that boy and girl's names, but they were very active.
What were the grievances that you had, and what motivated people to organize the local?
Everything: more money, better conditions, and certainly sanitation. It
was everything, and the main thing was conditions of employment plus
money. You were at the whim of the boss: you'd go up and ask or say
something and "If you don't like it, hit the street," that was the
answer you got to anything you wanted to say. You couldn't talk sensibly
to the boss. Mostly you didn't ask, because you knew what it was going
to be; if you had a
But how do you account for people at this point being willing to organize the union, try to do something about these conditions?
Had no place to go but up. Couldn't go back; up was the only place you could go.
Were people aware of the NRA Textile Codes, and that you were supposed to be getting more than you were?
Well, you see, when Roosevelt took office he practically had no opposition down South. Newspapers and everything were very quick to publish everything, because everyone wanted to get the country back on its feet. So consequently these people were expecting, they were ready to try to do something.
They thought that Roosevelt was going to do something?
People looked up to him; and he was a dynamic person, as you very well know, and was well-loved by the average person. They felt protected; they felt that now was the chance for them to do something for themselves. And a lot of people who had had some union experiences before and failed. . . . You must remember the mines had tried to organize in the twenties and failed, and out of that came some people who were still hoping some day to organize. They hadn't killed the labor movement when they lost and failed; there were still some people in all plants who were ready to take advantage of anything to get the union.
People were aware of Section A?
That's right. In fact, I know of three guys in our factory that had had
previous union experience. One was an electrician; he worked as a
journeyman electrician, and he was a union man. And these two guys had
Were the most active people in the local the more skilled workers or section hands?
Yes, in our case, yes.
Is that right?
The weavers. We looked to them, because they were the ones that could control the thing. If you didn't have the weavers and you didn't have the section hands or the loom fixers, they were looked up to because they were skilled, and they couldn't be replaced easy.
Oh. Well, what about the more unskilled workers? Were they willing to come into the local?
Oh yes.
Or were they waiting?
We kind of looked up to those people; the section hands, the loom fixers and the weavers, they were kind of looked up to. Anything they'd do we felt like it was good for us too, because they were already making more than we were—precious little, but they were making more.
Well, what happened when the management found out that this local was organized or was being organized?
Well, they fired some people; there were some people that lost their jobs. Of course, after the strike. . . .
Coming back to events that led up to the strike. . . .
When the mills went from two twelve-hour shifts to three there became a
shortage of workers, and particularly in ours. There was a big mill
there, a Comer Mills, at Avondale, much bigger than this one where they
made the material for the sugar bags. It was a much better run mill, a
bigger company, more powerful. The old man that owned this mill, that
bought it out and started it up, came out of Mississippi; his name was
Ames, A-m-e-s. When we started organizing and he got wind of it, he shut
the place down one night and called us all together and made a talk. He
told us how he came and opened this place up, and people were needing
jobs and they were hungry, and he'd been losing money constantly. And I
listened to this for a while and I couldn't stand it no longer. He was
begging us not to quit and go over to the other mill and go to work. And
some nights we couldn't start up the second shift; there wouldn't be
enough people in there to start up, because, as I say, they began to
compete for the labor. He was begging us not to quit and to stay with
him, because he'd operated the place more or less just for our benefit.
So I said, "Hey, may I ask a question?" And he said, "Yes." And I said,
"Well, if we all get a job somewhere else then you won't have to be
responsible to see that we get a paycheck, so it should be to your
advantage if we could leave and go to work somewhere else." [laughter]
They fired a little old woman that was a good bit older than me; I can't
remember her name, but me and her became good friends. She was very
Did the black women join the union?
Oh yes, we had about seven or eight black people that worked there at one job or another, and they joined.
Now before you went out on strike, did you take your grievances to the manager or try to get anything changed?
No, no.
There were no negotiations going on back and forth?
No, they wouldn't recognize you; they wouldn't even talk to you.
Did you try to send a delegation to talk to them at all?
Oh yes, we had a committee. We wouldn't have asked them to negotiate had we not had a majority. But no, there wasn't really nothing in that Section that could give you really any power; there wasn't much teeth in it.
To enforce it, right. So how did it come about that you went out on strike?
Well, you know, Frank Gorman, president of the United Textile, he got up
and just called for a general strike. And hell, everybody come out,
non-union as well as union. [laughter]
This is what I wanted to ask you. In July of '34 people in the mills in Alabama went out on strike before the strike was officially called in September by the United Textile Workers.
Is that in Huntsville? Yes, not all of Alabama, I don't think, but Huntsville probably, because Huntsville was strongly organized, and their mills were owned by northern New England men. They felt a little more secure that they would get something, and they did get contracts in Huntsville.
Now did you go out in July, or did you not go out until after?
I was out in July.
You all went out in July? Well, then that was before the strike was officially called.
Yes, I don't remember. But anyway we went out, because I remember we was out on the fourth of July.
What I'm trying to understand is, it was really the workers themselves in the local unions who went out on strike that forced the United Textile Workers to officially. . . .
I don't think so. I wouldn't say one way or the other, because my memory isn't that good. I don't know if we came out before the general strike or not in that particular place; I can't remember.
Well, if you were out in July. . . .
Well, we were out; I know we were out.
How was that decision made to go out? Do you remember the day that you went out?
No, I don't. Well, I was the second shift; the first shift struck. And then when we arrived there, see, it was already on.
But you don't remember the local union . . .?
I don't remember how the action was taken; I just don't remember how the decision was made to strike. It seems like we struck over them firing Jim Rogers; seems like that was actually what triggered it, when they fired the president and this little old lady (she was older than me).
Did everybody in the plant go out?
Yes, we shut it down tighter than a door nail, because we were in the mining area (the mines were organized by that time). We had the support of the miners, we had the support of all the building trades—you know, we had a pretty good labor movement in Birmingham. And so we were tight; nobody worked, and we had a fence around the gate. They tried to scab, like I say; they brought a truckload of strikebreakers in there. And these two guys that I was telling you about helped recruit them; sold us out—didn't sell us out, but they turned.
They were scabbing?
They would come in and try to bring these scabs in, but they didn't get in—didn't get through the gate.
How did you keep them out?
We got in the gate; they couldn't get in. We had help.
From the miners?
Yes. Everybody when we had trouble, we'd all go help each other, you know. Most of our men had kind of chickened out on us, and most of us that were sticking were the women.
Is that right?
Most of the men in our department chickened out.
They didn't go back to work, but they just what?
Tried to help break the strike, recruited strikebreakers. They came in from Georgia (they brought them in in trucks), and they came in with police.
Why did the men chicken out and not the women?
I just don't understand that, unless they thought they were going to lose—which we did. We might not have if they'd stuck with us. This young fellow that I told you a while ago that stuck with us, his daddy (I'm trying to think of his devilish name, that old guy—I can see him now) was one of the fixers. I know when they came this little kid was standing there (he was a young fellow), and he said, "I can't hit my daddy, so you all get him and I'll get somebody else." He told me that the company gave him a hundred dollars to help recruit—a hundred dollars was a lot of money in them days.
Did you have a picket line around the mill?
Yes. There was a fence, that's one good thing; they had a fence and they had to go in gates, and it was easier to take care of it.
Were there any violence and fights?
Those strikebreakers didn't want to fight; and of course they just didn't
even get off the trucks. And these two guys that I'm telling you about,
they came up and tried to get us to get out of the way. No, there
weren't actually no fights. They come up and we wouldn't move.
How did you live during that time that you were on strike?
Well, I was fixing to say. Right after we struck I was living with my sister, and all she had was what I was bringing in. So I had to go back, and I couldn't stay and continue to picket; I had to go back and stay at home. So I'd just come back now and then, you know, to help out with the union activities, because we didn't have no money to live on. We didn't have no strike benefits. I stayed as long as I could, but I had no income, I had no way even to get out to the picket line (I had no carfare), so I had to go home and stay for most of the duration of the strike in order to have some place to live and eat.
Did people get federal relief?
I didn't know of no federal relief. I remember we used to go to stores and ask if they'd donate. Stores were pretty good; a lot of them were locally-owned little stores, and they'd donate maybe just a sack of flour here and a piece of meat there, and some shortening here. We'd come back to the union hall and divide it up among the ones who were the most needy. All I ever got was a dollar to have my shoes half-soled; that's the only thing I ever got—I never asked for anything. But as I say, I couldn't stay because I had no place to stay. And my sister lived way on the other side of town and I didn't even have carfare; she couldn't furnish me carfare, and her children were out with my mother and daddy. She'd gone to work selling cosmetics trying to make a little money.
How did the managers react to the strike? What did they do? Did
No, no; they shut the gates and shut down the mill. The bosses just left the mill—except they had a watchman, you know, to watch it. But there was no activity at the mill; they didn't attempt to open it up, except that one time they brought that truckload. They couldn't run it with that one truckload; they were on a flatbedded truck standing up like a bunch of cattle, but they couldn't have operated it with that.
See, there were one or two paid organizers in the state, and they couldn't supervise; we were just more or less left pretty well to fend for ourselves the best we could. And they had to spend, of course, a lot of their time in Huntsville because they had more people out and three big mills: Dallas, Merrimack and Erwin Mills were all out. And of course they got contracts there.
I was going to ask you whether the flying squadrons came.
Those flying squadrons were the ones who were going to other mills that weren't closed down.
Did you have any people that participated in flying squadrons?
No, no. They tried to go down to some of the places that didn't, like
Talladega, Alabama (you know, they didn't come out, the Talladega Cotton
Factory, they called it). And there were a few places, you know, that
didn't, and they were trying to shut them down to make it more
effective. I can't remember if the Alabama Mills. . . . There was a
bunch of mills started up by the
Did you send any representatives to the UTW convention in September from your local?
No, didn't have no money.
How did the strike come to an end?
Well, we just called it off.
How did people react when the United Textile Workers Union called off the strike? Did they feel like the union had given them as much support as they should have? Did they feel sold out at all when it was called off?
Well, some people (for instance Jim) got just very disgruntled, Jim
Rogers. I know me and him had a physical fight [laughter]
You and him did?
One time in the union hall, fighting about the representatives, you know.
[laughter] [laughter]
So you didn't feel like there was good strong leadership at the local level?
No, no. Not enough good advice, and not enough communication. It wasn't nobody's fault; it was just bigger than they could handle. They weren't prepared to handle something that big. I remember that after we went back in the plant to work, why, they made this one guy a boss, strawboss—one of the guys that had sold us out. He came down there and started saying something to me one day, and I said, "Oh, you get away from me, you scab." And he said, "Well, I ain't no scab, but I can't swallow that Frank Gorman." I said, "Well, I don't have to follow Frank Gorman. If you're a union person you don't pick out somebody and just follow them, you follow the union." But that's the only thing I ever heard. You know, but of course he was trying to fix. . . . He said he was still a union man; he was trying to blame it on Frank Gorman, and we never had seen him.
Did you get any help from the State Federation of Labor? Were they wholeheartedly behind the strike?
No; I mean, they just weren't able to give any kind of physical or financial support.
So when the strike was called off and you went back to work, you yourself didn't have any feelings of disillusionment with the union?
No. It was something we tried and failed, like the people during World
War I: I'd seen it, they tried and failed. And you get a little stronger
even if you fail; you get a little stronger each time. That's the way I
felt about it, because I'd seen what had happened in World War I. It
didn't disillusion me that we failed that time. Some people won; we
weren't a failure. We didn't win, but look at what we picked up, and
look
Did other people in your local feel that way? Optimistic?
Yes, later on we had a union in that place where I worked; later on after I left there they organized. And somebody else bought it and it was a union shop later on. Link Belt bought it, and they organized a union.
Did other union organizers and leaders come out of that local besides yourself, or are you really the only one?
I'm the only one that lasted. Alice was on the staff first, but wasn't too. . . .
So when you went back to work, how were things different than they had been before you went out on strike?
In our department, no difference, because (like I said) we hadn't had much problem. We had Joe as our overseer; he was over the department, and we had never had too much discrimination or nothing. It wasn't no better or no worse.
But you kept on trying to negotiate a contract?
Yes, we kept trying. That's when Steve Nance entered the picture, and we
still tried to meet and tried to negotiate some of them people back to
work. And we finally just gave up. I guess at the time then
Well, tell me how you got involved with the Women's Trade Union
Well see, I was a delegate to the Central Labor Union. Now, Miss Mollie Dowd during that time had become active in the Textile Workers' Union. Where she come from I don't know; I never knew her, but I learned after I did get acquainted with her that she was a resident of Birmingham, and at one time worked for Loveman, Joseph and Loeb, a big department store there. She had been active with another bunch of women in the Women's Trade Union League.
You met her at the Birmingham Central Labor Union?
Well, actually when she began to work with the United Textile Workers too I got acquainted with Miss Mollie. Then after we lost, of course, the people who were paying dues just lost our local. And so as long as I worked second shift I couldn't attend no meetings of the Women's Trade Union League. I don't remember just when Miss Mollie tried to set the chapter up. But then she was let go—of course, the Textile Workers didn't have any money, and she was let go from the Textile Workers' Union. But she still was on the executive board of the National Women's Trade Union League. And we set up the chapter: Polly Brown worked at Pizitz Department Store (they didn't have a contract; she was a member of the retail clerks); and this Morris girl (you know, I told you); Miss Louise O. Charlton was a lady judge there; and Miss Velma Smiley (she worked at the courthouse; she joined and she was very active). And oh, good gracious, I can't think of that lady lawyer; me and her got to be good friends. She didn't make much success as a lawyer, but she was a very good person. What was her name? I thought of her name the other day. Cora. . . .
How many members were there?
We never had a big chapter.
About how many would you say?
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
I'd say about. . . . Most of them were wives of men who worked for the labor unions; we tried to get numbers, you know, to help us.
How was it divided between working women and professionals? How many of each?
Well, you couldn't have but ten percent of your members from non-trade union people. We had Miss Smiley, Louise O'Charlton, and Cora (I can't think of Cora's last name right now; I want to say Cora Thomas, but I'm not sure—this lady lawyer), and then some of the wives of the guys in the red ore mines. But they couldn't come much, because they lived down in Bessemer, and they had their own auxiliaries too. Back then practically all the crafts' labor unions had auxiliaries; the wives belonged to the auxiliaries to the local, but most of them weren't working women. The mine workers had an auxiliary, and the red ore miners had auxiliaries, and the railway brotherhood had auxiliaries. We tried to get those women, but of course they were took up with their other activities.
What were the relationships like between the working women and the professional women? I mean, was the relationship good, or was there some condescension from one side to the other?
Well, it was. No, as far as I was concerned it was very good, because most of them were sympathetic, and they pretty well listened to us as guidance. And then they threw their political influence or their influence where they could help us. More or less we would set the program and they would help us any way they could. They were sympathetic to it.
And what kind of things did you try to do?
Well, I remember there was a lot of dissension among domestic workers in homes, and women and young girls who worked in restaurants. A lot of it was just practically unpleasantness they had to take from men in order to hold their jobs. And then too, we participated (when the ore miners struck) and helped to get up food and clothing. We'd collect food and clothing from everywhere we could. And we'd help groups that were trying to organize if they needed anything.
Were the domestic workers themselves trying to do something about their conditions?
No, no; really they weren't.
How did you become aware of the problems of domestic workers?
We were trying to talk with these women who did hire. And I remember we got one woman to kind of act—she finally didn't stay. Her husband owned a big dairy there, and we tried to work through her clubs to try to make it a little easier on these domestic workers. It might be hard for you and somebody to understand, but it was a hangover from the old days. Mostly black women, if they quit a job (didn't like it somewhere), well then word would get out that they were thieves, and they couldn't get a job nowhere else. Or if the man of the house or the son wanted to abuse them, if the wife caught them then naturally she got the blame—sordid and unpleasant things like that, mainly. We were trying to work through this other group of women to make them understand, to stop doing this. We were trying to help them without their knowledge.
Trying to help the domestic workers without their knowledge?
Because we knew what was going on among them. We wanted to
Right. Were you aware of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the existence of that group based in Atlanta?
No, I sure wasn't.
Or the Women's Anti-Lynching Association?
No.
I didn't know whether they were active in Birmingham or not.
If they were I didn't know anything about it.
How did your sister get to be president of the Women's Trade Union League? Was she involved in that from the beginning as well?
I'd rather not have this on tape, what I'm going to say now. [Interruption]
You're saying that the League didn't hold together?
No. And then about that time. . . .
Why didn't it hold together?
I guess they just couldn't keep enough members, and didn't get the proper support. Back in them days the men didn't really support the women like they should have either.
Where did you try to get support for the Women's Trade Union League?
Among the unions. I guess it was about the only chapter in the South. Of
course, we helped the Amalgamated in Chicago start; the Women's Trade
Union League furnished the leadership to help build the Amalgamated.
Were you involved in trying to get support from the unions or from the Federation of Labor for the League?
No. Most of the time, you see, when the League started I worked the second shift. I didn't get to go to the meetings even. It was only after I got fired, and it didn't last too long. I couldn't even go to the meetings when I worked second shift, because they met at night. Then after I got fired, of course, I attended and tried to do. . . . Then I went to work full-time as an organizer and was not in Birmingham. But the Birmingham chapter was short-lived.
I see. You went to a convention in Washington?
Yes, during this time.
To the '36 convention?
I wasn't a delegate from the chapter; they gave me the trip, they called it a scholarship. The national League brought me because of my activity as a volunteer organizer in trying to help; they brought me up there kind of as a little bonus, I guess, to give me a little special attention. Polly Brown and Miss Morris and my sister went from the League, and Miss Mollie Dowd. I went along as the guest being paid for by the national organization.
I see. And what was that trip like for you?
Well, that's, you know, when I got fired for making that trip. When I got
back I got fired, but I never regretted it. I lived hard a year
afterwards; I had a real tough year after I got fired. Well, needless to
say, for a kid that never had been anywhere in their life. . . . I
remember [laughter]
What did you think about the convention itself?
Our main thing right then was trying to get the Textile Bill passed, which was a minimum wage law for textile workers. We had already accomplished, you know, getting prison labor work out of the prisons, with the labor movement and other groups (not primarily union groups, but other groups).
Do you remember discussion at that convention about whether to put money into organizing the League in the South?
Oh yes, yes, and to help in organizing the unorganized, yes—to do what they could.
They were pulling back from the South really, though, at that time. The League was not. . . .
It hadn't made its gains in the South; no, it never did—mainly around New York, Chicago and places like that.
So how did it come about that that caused you to lose your job?
Well, you see, I knew I was going, and I had gone and asked my boss if I
could be off. I didn't tell him why I wanted to be off, but I went and
said, "I'd like to be off the week of so-and-so"—whichever week in May
this was. And he said, "Well, wait 'til nearer the time and come and ask
me again, and if I can possibly do without you I'll let you go, let you
be off." So about a week or so beforehand I went and said, "Remember,
Joe, I asked you I wanted off the week of so-and-so?" And he said, "OK."
I never told him why; he never asked me. But when all this came out in
the paper about us being
There were articles in the Birmingham Herald?
Yes, it came out in the newspapers, our pictures and everything, yes, because they thought it was quite a treat, you know.
So you arrived back at work and walked in. . . .
When I started to go in I was called to come by the big office. The big office set out here away from the mill, like a little house, and you'd go around the office to go inside the entrance to the mill. I started to go around, and they pecked on the window and told me to come in the office. So the general superintendent over all (they had another place in Mississippi) said, "I didn't know we had any unions here." I said, "We don't." And he said, "Well, what is this thing you just went to?" And I tried to explain to him. And his daughter was there, and she was right interested; she was trying to ask me what all happened. She wanted to know from me, you know, about the trip. Well, he made her be quiet. So he told me they didn't need me anymore.
So that was it?
That was it.
How did you live, then, that year?
Well, I had this girlfriend who had worked there in the plant with me.
She worked on WPA, and I stayed with her. She had a furnished room
(sleeping room), and she and I had a donut and a cup of coffee every
morning [laughter]
And you kept doing volunteer organizing?
Yes, all this time.
Who for?
Well, I helped any. I went with the Mine Workers' Union, the red ore
miners; I tried to help them strengthen their auxiliaries. The women in
the auxiliaries, every time they had a meeting they'd invite me. We'd
have these all-day affairs; they'd bring lunch, and they'd have little
projects, you know. They were like clubs, but they were interested in
helping the union. I attended all those, and there was any number of
them going on around Birmingham. I worked with those ladies, and tried
to help them do things that would help the labor movement—especially
buying union-made products. That was one of our prime objectives in the
auxiliaries. I tried to help organize the steel mills; I'd help deliver
leaflets at the plant gate. Became very good friends with a group of men
that later on became representatives of the Steel Workers, and some of
them directors. They came out of those mills there at Ensley and at
Fairfield; and I got acquainted with them through the organizing efforts
in the thirties, although they didn't get their unions until in the
forties. Bill Crawford, who migrated to Alabama from Akron, Ohio, came
in and worked the sheet mill; his son's now a representative. Bill
became director here in Atlanta later on. And Earl Crowder, who went
How did you get your first paid organizing job?
When the drive went on, the A.F.L.. . . .
The Textile Workers' Organizing Committee was set up, yes.
Yes, that's the first. Mr. Mitch, who was the district president of the United Mine Workers, called me up and asked me to come down to his office.
William Mitch? This was about 1936, do you think? 1936-1937?
Yes, probably the latter part of '36. And he called me up and asked me to—I remember it was raining like hell that day, pouring down the rain! I went up there and he told me that there was going to be some organizer put on to organize textile, and asked me why didn't I send in my application if I was interested in the job. And I said, "I don't know if I can do it." He said, "Well, that's what you've been doing. Of course, what do you think you've been doing but organizing?" So that's why I made application for the job and was put on the staff.
So you were working under Steve Nance, then?
Franz Daniel actually hired me; and I cannot remember, I think they split up the area, and Franz went up into Greenville and that area and Nance was put in charge. I didn't know Nance very well.
Did you go up to Atlanta to be interviewed?
Yes, by Franz Daniel.
And so you started organizing for them then? What did you do? What was that like?
Well, I came back to the Birmingham area and we had tried to
I can't understand how you would get that story out of trying to raise money for somebody's defense.
Well, I'll tell you what I think: I think he felt that there
So you were out of a job again?
I didn't have a paycheck; I was working, but I wasn't getting paid for
it. So, I just didn't know what I was going to do. Then in the meantime
my sister got laid off from Textile, and she didn't have anything to do.
She had been feeding me, because I'd been actually doing her work. So I
went back to Birmingham, and me and Ruth got us an apartment
together—this old friend of mine that I lived with. She still worked for
WPA and I was still trying to find some work. The Typographical Union
had their national convention in Birmingham; they didn't have too many
women in their union, so they wanted some women to kind of be hostess
and help them with their social affairs and things, so they asked me if
I'd help them. Of course, I wasn't getting paid for it, but I was doing
it. I was happy to do it. So I'd been down there, and it was about
midnight; I'd gone home and [laughter]
Now where had you met Myles Horton?
Oh, I had met Myles when I was in Textile; in Memphis, Tennessee is where
I met Myles. I was working in Memphis with the Textile Workers' Union.
It's right funny how I met Myles. I was staying at this hotel, and he
called me up and told me who he was. And I said, "Well, you wait; I'll
come down to the lobby"—because like I told you a while ago, we were
very careful not to let
Was that any men in your room?
That's right. And Memphis at that time particularly, the auto workers were really in a passle with the Ford Company, and Memphis was really bad—-they had all kinds of labor spies. And the Crump Machine was trying to keep the unions out of Shelby County, particularly Memphis, and we had to be doubly careful. The ILG had a strike on at the time, and Louise McLaren was there.
Is that where you met her?
And Myles laughs about that until today, when I said, "You wait right
there." I don't go meet him by myself; I called Homer's room. Homer
Welch was there with me. That's the last assignment me and him had with
the Textile Workers, the TWOC. And I said, "There's a guy down in the
lobby says he's Myles Horton, and he's from Highlander Folk School and
he's for the
Interesting.
And Myles was the one that called me. And so Clyde says, "Hey, how would you like to go work in Amalgamated Clothing Workers?" And I said, "Fine. When do I start?" And he says, "Well, get up and come back down here; I've got to leave town." I got up out of bed and went back down there and talked to Clyde. But Myles told me later that he was asking about my sister Clara, and he said, "That ain't the one you want. You've got them mixed up. The one you want is Eula McGill." Now that's what Myles told me later. So evidently them old friends of my sister's were still trying to. . . . I'm sorry to say it, but my sister's just that type of person: she just couldn't stick to nothing. She went to work later with the International Ladies' Garment Workers. She couldn't stay; she didn't have patience that it takes, you know. She didn't really have her heart in it, like you have to have it; that's what I think, you know.
How come you never went to work for the WPA when you were. . . ?
I worked one day for WPA.
Why did you hesitate so long to go that way?
Well, I don't know. I guess we were always independent; my mother was
that type of person. I remember in the Depression during the Hoover days
they were sending flour; the government was issuing flour to people.
Poppa said, "I think I'll go down and get us a sack of that flour."
Momma said, "no, you ain't going down to get it, no sir. We've got
something to eat; we don't need to go down and get their flour." I don't
know, I just had a feeling that it was giving up. I was giving up, it
was just a last
What did you do?
They put me to work with sandpaper, sandpapering school desks.
And that same day you got a job?
That night. So when I left work, see, I went home and dressed and went down to the Typographical Union for the affair that night. And I just got home about midnight and went to bed—because I walked from the hotel where it was out to where our apartment was.
Was this in 1938? Do you know when you started?
No, it was in '39, because I went to work on the Amalgamated payroll in '39.
Did you know the other people that were TWOC organizers, the other southerners that they put on for that campaign?
Other southerners?
Who did you work most closely with?
With Homer Welch and Tommy Sparks. See, I stayed mostly around Birmingham, and there wasn't much textile. Now, of course, there was Helen Gregory, Matt Lynch; but we all kind of worked together there then at Amalgamated. Matt was with hosiery division, Helen was with hosiery division. And Matt's president of the State Labor Council in Tennessee now, Matt Lynch. Let me see, Ray Nixon (well, I can't remember)—Ray was a director. [Regardless of whether we were organizing a textile mill or garment factory, we worked together.]
When you went to work for Amalgamated, then, you went to Atlanta, you moved to Atlanta.
My first assignment was here, on the Cluett-Peabody campaign. Then I went from there to Greenville, South Carolina.
Did you get involved right away in the Cluett-Peabody Plant?
Yes, my first assignment in the Amalgamated was on this, me and May Bagwell.
Tell me about May Bagwell. What was she like?
A very nice person. Her home is here, and me and May worked together.
She wasn't a worker herself, was she?
No. I don't know what May's real background was. She worked for a while, women's work some way or another.
But she was an organizer?
Oh yes, but that's the way a lot of organizers . . . we had a lot of organizers that didn't come out of the industry then. We didn't have nobody to pull from. And a lot of our people that had membership wouldn't have fitted in at that time then; some of our northern organizers, they wouldn't have fit.
So in order to have southern organizers you hired people that didn't come out of plants?
Yes, most of the kids were college students, and people who were really dedicated people. May and Hilda Cobb, and there was a girl named Clemmie Shucks—and we used to laugh about it, shucks and cob—and Grisilda Khuman.
Now, when you went on with Amalgamated, were there very many women organizers?
No, that was the beginning of women; even textile didn't hire
Why did they hire you?
I don't know—oh, the Amalgamated? Well, the Amalgamated had been a different union. In my history of the Amalgamated study this has been more liberal and more broad-minded, more socially-minded, I think, than any other union.
Were you aware of that before you went to work for them?
Yes. I used to know an old tailor at home; his name was Mueller, M-u-e-l-l-e-r. I used to go down on Saturday mornings and sit there and talk with him a lot. I got acquainted with him because I was trying to organize the alteration workers in the stores when I was on the organizing committee of the Central Labor Union. And he was a member of the journeyman Tailors' Union, and about that time they had become affiliated with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. He was telling me about the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; I'd just go around on Saturday mornings and sit with him while he worked, and he really gave me an education in the Amalgamated Clothing: talking about Hillman and Revechek and Rosenbloom.
What was it like being a single woman paid organizer, traveling around, living in motels?
Well, at first we didn't live in hotels. We might stay in a hotel a night
or two, but then we had to get a furnished room; there wasn't money to
pay hotel bills. I remember very well when I first went to work for the
union, I got twenty-five dollars a week. I couldn't afford a car; of
course, cars when you were organizing the textile mills back then
weren't as important as they are now, because the people lived in
villages and you could walk from house to house. And I got five dollars
a week for meals and
Was this from Amalgamated that you got this, or from TWOC?
Yes.
What did you make when you worked for TWOC?
I made twenty dollars a week when I worked; I don't remember if I ever got a raise. Twenty dollars a week, and of course we paid bus fare, carfare. I didn't get any food allowance. But you didn't get along too good on that; you done the best you could.
When you were working for Amalgamated were most of the other organizers men?
When I first went to work for the Amalgamated in '39 there were mostly men. Let's see, there was I and Hilda and Grezelda, Polly Galloway; no, we were mostly women.
You were mostly women?
Later on Ed Blair come to work; and we had, of course, Clyde the director and then Buck Borah was director. It was mostly women.
Thinking back, do you see yourself having special problems or special advantages being a woman in that kind of work? In some ways was it harder? In some ways was it easier than if you'd been a man?
No, I don't see that it was certainly any easier. In some case at first I
think that it was a little harder, in that women tend to listen to men
more than they do women [laughter]
Don't you think other women . . . ?
I've had men oppose me when I was trying to get their wives active in
those auxiliaries, telling me that their wives had a place in the home,
and that I ought to marry and [laughter]
What about people's attitude toward a young woman traveling alone and living that kind of unusual life?
Well a lot of people, I think, would suspect the worst of you, because
women didn't. And even today sometimes they say, "Oh, do you drive by
yourself?" There's still women today who ask me, "Do you mean you travel
by yourself? Aren't you afraid?" Even today I get that when I travel,
maybe, distances. I go somewhere to a meeting outside of Atlanta
Well, was it hard for you at all when you first started out to be so independent and take care of yourself, to go into strange situations and move around so much?
Well, I think that I got a lot of basic training before I ever went on the staff and started traveling, that I tried to handle myself and approach people in such a manner that I put them at ease. Now, sometimes you'll run into a lot of people who would insult you.
What kind of people?
Well, a lot of this sort of people that would try to say, "Why don't you
get a job and go to work? Why do you come around and try to stir up
trouble while we're happy, and the boss gave me a job when I needed
one?" In other words, they looked upon us like some kind of a racket,
like they were doing us a favor to join the union. They're doing
something for us, they're not doing something for themselves. And
sometimes people would do it to hide their fear, actually. You can't let
these things bother you, and you can't feel hurt at these people. You
have to understand that it's new to them. I always remember where I was
when I worked in the plant, and how I saw people around me. . . . Well,
I used to be afraid; every time I'd see a boss coming, I was afraid he
was going to come down there and jump on me or fire me. And I always try
to remember, I've never forgotten that I worked in a plant just like
these people, and had my fears and anxieties. And while I never bought
nothing on credit (you couldn't get credit). . . . I never owed nobody
nothing, because I didn't have enough money to buy nothing. I had to
When you were working in Atlanta, Steve Nance died in '38, so he wasn't there when you went to Atlanta.
That's right, no, he died not long after letting me go.
Who was your boss? "Buck" Borah?
Clyde Mills.
He was the director of the southern campaign.
Yes, for Amalgamated.
Wasn't Borah in Atlanta?
"Buck" came on after Clyde; Clyde left and went with the National Mediation Service.
Who were some of the other people you were involved with in Atlanta?
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
. . . to Greenville to Wing Shirt, and tried to start a campaign there.
So you weren't in Atlanta very long?
Not very long at that time.
I see. So you didn't really follow that Cluett-Peabody campaign all the way through?
No, and May didn't either. May left the Amalgamated, and I don't know where May went when she left. She voluntarily left the Amalgamated. I told you I was going to try to find out where she was from Connie, but I haven't had the opportunity.
Did you run into the Atlanta Industrial Union Council?
Yes. Charlie Gilman was president of it, and they were very helpful to us in the area. The automobile workers, you know, had gotten organized here. I made a trip or two there.
A trip or two where?
To the meetings. And the automobile workers, as I remember, is about the only industrial union in the CIO, you know, and steel.
What about Lucy Randolph Mason?
Lucy [laughter]
What did you think about her?
She contacted me when she first came to Alabama, and, as I say, I was
working with these auxiliaries; it was during the time that I was
without a job, without a paycheck [laughter] [laughter] [laughter]
Well, did you think at the time that that kind of PR work that she was supposed to be doing was pretty futile? Did other people think that?
I don't know how the people felt. I thought, in the first place—-well, I
didn't do anything, because maybe I thought I'm not smart enough to
figure it out. Maybe it is something. But I did not think that that was
the way you would approach. . . . I mean, that's like the Republicans,
like Jerry Ford's going to give this tax break again to the
manufacturers so they'll hire labor. Just like Eisenhower in the
fifties: it just don't work that way! You have to start at the bottom;
you have to put money in people's pockets to spend, to buy things so
they can make more things. Well, the same thing with the labor movement;
you don't organize by going and saying to the boss, "Hey, be a nice guy
and let us have a union in here." Now, if we could do it that way I'd be
perfectly happy to do it, but then I'd want to educate the workers to
think for themselves and to run their own union. But you're not going to
meet that kind of enlightened management, then or now. Very seldom will
you run into a type of person who recognizes and realizes their workers
have a right to organize, and don't resist their efforts.
Were people resentful at all of the money going to somebody like Lucy Randolph Mason, and of her activities and her presence, and her being hired on the staff? Was there any disgruntlement?
I didn't hear any; I don't think so. I guess they felt (if they felt at all) like, "Well, this can't hurt us, and it might help us." Gilman supported her pretty much, I think, there at first. But I never had much dealings with her, because she was mainly around Atlanta—that first encounter, you know, and I'd run into her at meetings now and then. But we never crossed paths much.
This is just kind of a general question about workers' education; were you ever much involved in workers' education arm of the union?
No.
What kind of importance do you attach to that?
I think workers' education in our industry has to be a continuing thing.
You cannot pick up people off a machine and take them to a school a week
or two, and expect them to come back and make good leaders. They gain
something; but most of the time you try to cram them with so much that
to me it confuses them, and they don't know what to do when they come
back. They don't know what they've learned—in fact, they haven't learned
very much. Because going away for just a week or two, or something like
In the thirties and forties, what did you think about the concept of resident workers' education that Highlander and the Southern Summer School were trying to do?
Oh yes, for two or three months, yes; some very good work was done, I think.
So you thought that that was effective?
Yes, I did. I think that these institutes for a week or two, like going
up to this college or that, I'm very sorry to say this, but I think you
recognize this. . . . And I'm not throwing no slur at no workers,
because there's college students today that don't even know when they
attend these things what the people are talking about. They can't listen
and understand; in the first place, they can't read with
understanding—am I right? I have gone to meetings, and I sit there and I
know those people weren't even—I can look at their eyes and tell they
didn't even know what in the hell was being said. And if you don't get
right down to them and talk to them at their level. . . . I have talked
to college graduates that didn't understand what I was talking about
when I was talking about the labor movement. There's been nothing in the
schools—maybe a paragraph in there [laughter]
Right. Exactly.
So what do you expect? In two or three weeks you're going to educate a
worker, whether they were college level or can't read and write? I'd
rather take on [laughter]
Did you recruit people as you were working as an organizer to go to the workshops at Highlander or the Southern Summer School?
We supported Highlander, the Amalgamated did, because number one: I want
to say now that we never had (as far as I know, and certainly in any of
the places I've ever been) a segregated meeting. We held a lot of our
conferences at Highlander so that we would not have to segregate our
members, because we had two all black local unions (all black: one in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and one in Montgomery,
Alabama; and we had the laundry workers in Chattanooga that was a
majority black). That was before they hired them, mostly, in shops; you
know, before the Fair Employment Practice Act. So we used Highlander a
lot for that reason. We used Lake Junaluska for some too.
But did you feel that picking out promising union people from the locals and sending them to some place like Highlander was effective in creating leadership, local leadership? Did you see that actually happen?
No, I can't say that I have. A lot of times maybe the one who could be
free to go—now, you must think about that we've got a majority of women.
A lot of women can't up and go, can't leave the family. So consequently,
maybe somebody went who it was convenient for and could go, but they
weren't the best people to have gone. So maybe sometimes we didn't get
the best candidate. Then some who did go came back, and they thought
they knew it all, and so they were uneffective because of that attitude
when they came back. Because they'd been away for school two or three
weeks, all of a sudden they had all the answers. So they didn't approach
the people right,
What was your contact with Louise McLaren?
I met up with her in Memphis.
Did you know her then after that?
No, after that I never did; like I said, I lost track of her. Those few weeks that I was there in Memphis (I got my letter of termination while I was in Memphis) she was there with the ILG; they had a strike on.
What about Brownie Lee Jones?
I don't remember Brownie Lee; that name sounds familiar, Brownie.
She took over the Southern Summer School later on in the forties, when it moved to Richmond. She was head of it.
That name sounds familiar. You see, in there from '43 up until about '50 I was a business agent confined to Tennessee, and didn't travel around as much as I had organizing. I didn't come in contact with people. And I didn't come in contact with too many people in North and South Carolina until just, say, the last three years when I was getting in that area. And a lot of people are names to me that maybe I've met or maybe I didn't meet, but I didn't really know them.
Oh, let me ask you just about this little incident in Lucy Randolph
Mason's book, To Win Thes}e Rights. She tells about
this incident in which she doesn't tell the name of the town, but some
town (she calls it "blank") where the Amalgamated was organizing and
sent Ed Blair in to organize. And he was run out of town and they sent
you in, and you were forced to leave your hotel room and leave town, and
they sent her in?
She's got that all mixed up. Miss Lucy must have been out of her mind
when she wrote that thing, because that's all mistaken. I read
END OF INTERVIEW