Listen Online with Text Transcript

Download Complete Audio File (MP3 format / ca. 218 MB, 01:59:28)

Mozilla/Firefox: Right click and "Save Link As..."
Internet Explorer: Right click and "Save Target As..."

HTML file

XML/TEI source file

Flake and Nellie (Workman) Meyers were both born around the turn of the twentieth century. Born into a family of farmers and furniture makers, Flake first began to work at the age of sixteen, around 1913, in High Point, North Carolina, in order to help support his family. Flake worked at several furniture manufacturing companies during his career, spending most of his time at the Southern Desk Company. After working several years learning different jobs in the furniture factories, Flake became a foreman in the early 1920s. He describes in vivid detail what it was like to work in the furniture industry, paying special attention to techniques used to make furniture, the role of machinery in the workplace, and relationships between employees and employers. Nellie Workman also grew up in rural North Carolina in a large family. As the oldest daughter, Nellie spent a great deal of time helping her mother raise her nine siblings and tend house. Before her marriage to Flake Meyers in 1922, Nellie worked briefly in the cotton mills in Vale, North Carolina. Flake Meyers's job as foreman in the Southern Desk Company in Conover, North Carolina (where they eventually settled), provided sufficient economic means for Nellie to stay home and raise their children without having to work outside of the home. Together, the stories they tell reveal the nature of living and working in a Southern working community during the early twentieth century.

Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection

Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews

Furniture workers--North Carolina

Women in the textile industry

Trade-unions--Furniture workers