[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

ALLEN TULLOS:

When were you born?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

June the seventh, 1893.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did your parents do?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

My dad was a contractor.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Built houses?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about your mother?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

She didn't do any work.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many brothers and sisters did you have?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

There was five girls and four boys.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So your mother looked out for all the children and cooked and washed the clothes and kept house.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you come here to Charlotte?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

1917.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did you do?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I first started off oiling the motors on the streetcars and switching the cars in at night when they come in. Had eight tracks out there. Then I worked up to night foreman. That's when the strike took place, when I was night foreman.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did you get that first job?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I had a brother; he was streetcarring.

ALLEN TULLOS:

He worked for the streetcars.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

He rode a bicycle from Gastonia [laughter] over here and got a job.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was his job?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

He was a streetcar man.

ALLEN TULLOS:

A conductor?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

A conductor, yes. Well, he'd run the motor and conduct sometime. One-man car, he acted as the motorman and conductor.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And so he helped get you the job?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. And my sister's husband used to wind the armatures, the motors. And he was the master mechanic here, too, over the streetcars.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was his name?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

W. V. Osborne. He's dead now. He's got a son that's a lawyer here, Wallace Osborne.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did most of the people who worked for the streetcar company come from around this part of the country?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Different sections, and different towns around.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What do you remember about the strike?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I had charge of it at night.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Of the car barn?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. And I was standing right in front of the streetcars; they was all in the barn. The policemen had cushions out of the cars, down between the streetcars, sitting on them. I was standing right in front of the guns when the shooting took place. They killed an engineer. Found him down there at that laundry. Another boy was killed in front of the streetcar. Found him under a big tree over there. There used to be a big two-storey home; a Lethco had it and owned the laundry. I forget how many was killed that night.

ALLEN TULLOS:

About five all together.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I was standing right there when them guns went off.

ALLEN TULLOS:

The police were on the outside?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The police was between the streetcars, only they had cushions out of the streetcars, setting on them.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They were outside of the barn.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. They were right in the front. The ends of the streetcars were right in the front of the barn. They were setting between there. That was a mess, I'm telling you, boy.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where were you, exactly, in front of the policemen?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Standing right in front of a streetcar. And shooting [unknown] .

ALLEN TULLOS:

Who started the shooting?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Walter Orr was chief of police, and a fellow Wilson from north Charlotte—I think he was kind of a rough guy—was out there, and some policeman knocked him down with his gun. When he did, why, there was a crowd around the lightpost in front of the barn there. Chief Orr said, "Get back, every damn one of you." And they commenced running, and the police commenced shooting.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So the police started the shooting first.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

They was the only ones [that] shot, as I know of. Wasn't nobody [that] shot out there; they run.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They were running away from them.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. Getting scattered out.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why did the police shoot them?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't know. To break it up, I guess.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did you do when all that was going on?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I just stood there right in front of a streetcar. Some of the police that was in the car had the windows down, shooting in windows. They'd lower them windows.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why was it that the Wilson man came to the car barn?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

He come out of the crowd out there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why did he come over there?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

See, we had strike-breakers back there, too.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where were they from?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Oh, all over the North somewhere.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They weren't from around here.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No. They had regular strike-breakers at that time. And they slept in the paint shop back there and [would] eat up in the powerhouse. The powerhouse was right next to the streetcar barn. A lot of people wanted to say they done the shooting. It wasn't them; it was the police done the shooting, because they was back in the paint shop.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did Mr. Wilson work for the streetcar company?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, he was from north Charlotte.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was he doing down there?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't know. He just come down just like the crowd.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Just because there was a crowd.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

He wanted to see what was going on.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were any of the men that worked on the streetcars in the crowd?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No. Wasn't none of them out there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why was it, you reckon, that crowd got together? What caused that crowd to form?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't know. Just because the strike was going on, and them strike-breakers was down there or something. Somebody said something about, they said they was going to go back there and get the strike-breakers, but man, they had all kind of guns and everything. [laughter] And the strike-breakers would take a streetcar out and run it and keep what they took in. They sent them word from north Charlotte that they had a Hindenburg Line over there, to send a streetcar over there. [laughter] But they wouldn't send one over there. They'd tear it up, see.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They had a Hindenburg Line.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why did that happen in north Charlotte?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

They were in favor of the streetcar men.

ALLEN TULLOS:

There were lots of the textile workers over there in north Charlotte.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. They had textile mills over there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And they were supporting the streetcar workers.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember there being a textile strike before the streetcar strike, in north Charlotte?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember nothing about that.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

This [unknown] story [unknown] says that Clem Wilson was the Wilson fellow's name.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I believe that was his name.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And he was just a kind of a trouble-maker sort of a character?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes, they figured he was kind of a rough kind of guy.

ALLEN TULLOS:

It says the policeman knocked him down.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes, hit him down. Hit him with a gun, and Walter Orr, the Chief of Police, was standing there with that bunch at the light, right in front of the barn. Oh, as far as from here to that lamp over there. And he said, "Get back, every damn one of you." He was talking to the crowd. When they started running, he run back to the streetcar before they commenced shooting.

ALLEN TULLOS:

This story that we have here says Clem Wilson came out and the policeman knocked him down, and then the Wilson boy's brother came out to see the chief.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes, he come out there, too, I think.

ALLEN TULLOS:

A little later on.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

One of the people that died was an engineer for the Southern Railway.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. They found him over there at the laundry. It was kind of a little low place. They found him laying down in there. And they found one across the street under a big tree. And they commenced loading up what was shot in the legs around and getting them to the hospital in cars.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you know any of the people that were killed?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I didn't know them.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did you think about all this union business while it was going on then? What side were you on?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I belonged to the union. But I was night foreman, and they let me work on.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You didn't go out on the strike.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No. They agreed for me to stay there, because I was night foreman.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Who agreed?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The union, all the men.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Who was the leader of the union?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't remember now.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you ever hear of this man named A.E. Jones?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

He's the name that we have as one of the organizers that came with the Amalgamated . . .

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I didn't know [unknown] .

ALLEN TULLOS:

And there was a John J. Williams. Do you remember anybody named John J. Williams?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

What led up to the strike? What kind of conditions, or why was it that the workers wanted to have a strike?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I think they wanted more money, so they got organized and then the company got strike-breakers in here. [unknown] Try to knock it up, you know. The paint shop was back there next to the railroad. Some guy told some of the union men if they'd give him so much money, he'd blow them the strike-breakers out of there. Asked him how he would do it. He said he'd take dynamite and put him a board in the ground and light the dynamite and shoot it up on top of the paint shop. And dynamite pressure goes down, you know. The union streetcar men wouldn't agree to that. Said he'd blow them out. [laughter]

ALLEN TULLOS:

The strike-breakers.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So they didn't support any kind of violence.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were all the streetcar workers pretty much together?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Just a few of them didn't join the union. We had a boy that died here just a few weeks back. He wouldn't join, a mechanic. He lived back over here at [unknown] . He was from Griffin, Georgia, out from Atlanta. He never would join the union. Every time we'd get a raise, he'd brag about it. An old nigger back there greasing the busses said, "Mr. Bill, the union got it for you." He'd tell [him] that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the black and the white workers both join the union?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the black and white workers meet together?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was there any race problem over that?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

This is a union button I got here a while back.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What does that say?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Twenty year.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Which union?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why did the strike end? After those people were killed, then what happened?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The company officials and the men got together and agreed to go back to work, is all I know.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the union feel like it had won or not?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't believe they did.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember what you got out of the strike?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember whether they got a raise or what. I don't think we did, though. I think they told what wanted to come back to work to come; what didn't, why, they fired.

ALLEN TULLOS:

One of the things that the union wanted, as I understand it, was to be a part of the national union, the Amalgamated Association.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But they didn't get that. Mr. Taylor and those people wouldn't go along with that.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember that?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes. Old man Z. V. Taylor was president at that time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did the union workers think about him during that time?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't think they liked him much [laughter] , but couldn't say much.

ALLEN TULLOS:

After the strike was over, did a lot of the men go back?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

About all of them, yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the company fire any of them that were union leaders?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't think so.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was your job?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I was night foreman at that time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you stayed on as night foreman.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What were your other jobs?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I used to wind them armatures in motors. Did all kind of electrical work on the streetcar, controllers and all that stuff. Go out and put them on the track when you'd get off and everything.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How long did you work with the streetcar company?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I worked forty-one years in all, but I forget now how many years I worked for [unknown] City Coach when they took over. The city's got it now. I think I worked five or six years for them. The rest of it was Duke Power.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you stayed with that same company all the time that you worked. You never did any other kind of work?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you retire?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

When I was sixty-five.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And you retired from the City Coach?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What were you doing then?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I was winding armatures, winding them motors. They had a meeting down there, and old man Dunket(?) was over all the streetcar boys. And Duke Power turned over $700,000 to City Coach for retirement money. Me and Ashe retired from City Coach. We get our retirement checks from

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Page 10

Jacksonville, Florida, every month.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was work on the streetcars in any way a dangerous kind of work to do?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Oh, yes. A fellow King got killed when this trolley fell out here next to Lakewood. We had pick-ups insulated out of fiber to pick the wire up and had a rope to tie it up somewhere. He got out and was trying to pick it up and got a-hold of it, and it killed him. I've been stuck hundreds of times on top. Grab a pole and get it all. 550. I expect I had it a hundred times.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Can you remember anything else about that time when the strike was going on that you hadn't talked about?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Only thing, Mr. Ramseur was the inspector over the streetcars, and he was there that night the shooting took place, standing behind one of them brick columns between the tracks. Old man Sutton was the claim agent for Duke Power. He had me and Mr. Ramseur up there in his office. And we told him just exactly what we thought, and he didn't have us back no more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did you all tell him?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

We told him just what happened, about Chief Orr telling them to get back, every damn one of them, and the police started shooting. We told him all that. He didn't call us back any more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you think a lot of the people who were in that crowd were from north Charlotte?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't know where they were from.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were you and Mr. Ramseur the only streetcar workers that were there?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Yes, me and him was the only ones that was there. [Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where did you live when you were working then?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

When I moved to Charlotte, I moved up here at the second light, right next [unknown] there. They called it the Flatiron Building. I moved upstairs when I first come to Charlotte.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How long did you live there?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't remember, but I moved down then on Eustis Avenue, across from the streetcar barn.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why did you do that?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't know. [laughter]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it so you could walk to work?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The rent, I believe, was cheaper. Then I moved back over there right off of South Tryon, and I bought that place out younder in 1920 and moved out there. I've been out there, it'll be sixty-one years, I believe, in August.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How would you get to work when you lived out there?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. [laughter] Used to take my wife a-revving around on it. I wouldn't have one now if you give it to me. I used to go out to the Fairgrounds and ride that thing around in there. Not now, though.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Tell me a little bit about your wife and her family and how you met her. What was her name?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Her name was Ellen Morris.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where was she from?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

She was born out from Old Fort. They had a farm out there, and they sold it and moved to Cliffside, I believe they called it. And you know what they got an acre for that land?

ALLEN TULLOS:

A dollar?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

A dollar an acre.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did her family do?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

They raised stuff on that farm in the mountains. There was eleven girls and no boys in her family. There's one living now in Gastonia, and ten dead.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did they do when they moved to Cliffside?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I think they worked in the mill up there in Cliffside.

ALLEN TULLOS:

All the children went to work in the mill.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

What was old enough, yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did you meet her?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

My youngest sister lived there in Gastonia. They built them a house. Her husband is dead. And I met my wife at a Seventh Day Adventist tent meeting. I took her home from that tent that night. That's when I first met her, right there where my sister lives now.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How long did you all go together before you got married?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I guess it was two years or over. All the boys tried to get her from me. My wife was a beautiful woman.Old rich boy(?) over there wanted to know how Cloniger ever got that pretty little Morris girl. She was a good Christian, too. Her mother was church-going and a Christian.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What religion did they belong to?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I believe her mother belonged to the Lutheran Church.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What were you brought up as?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

A Methodist.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you all get married?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

1915. My wife was seventeen, and I think I was about twenty.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you go off to World War I?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I had one child, my oldest boy. I went up and registered up here at the courthouse, and they put me in Class IV, and I missed it. If they'd went on just a little longer, they'd have got me.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember the company giving you all a couple of little pay raises in 1918, before the strike took place?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember nothing about that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

The cost of living got to be higher while the War was going on. Do you remember?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember. I know I was working carpenter work in Gastonia. Two dollars a day was top pay for a finished carpenter. I come over here and went to work for $1.75 a night, thirteen hours a night, seven nights a week. And they offered me nine dollars a day to go to City Point, Virginia, to carpenter. Some of the boys went. I didn't go. They was building a powder plant for World War I at City Point, Virginia. But I was kind of glad I didn't go. That was a fly-by-night thing, [would have] been over with. But that was some money, nine dollars a day, go from two dollars to nine.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many children did you have?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I've got two girls and two boys.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did they do when they grew up?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

The oldest boy worked up here for Duke Power in the office a few years, and then he went to Salisbury to that power plant out there, Buck(?) Steam Plant. And he was chief clerk out there, and he was with them about forty-two years. He retired here a while back at sixty-two. The other boy . . .

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

He worked over in the streetcar stock room a while. He joined the Navy. When he come out, he rode on the county police(?) seven years. He went back up there then and was assistant court clerk for about twelve years, and the city took the county court over. And he went to dispatching, taking calls and sending cars out. He had twenty-some years, but he retired at fifty-seven. He's single, and he stayed with me. I lost my wife in '72.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What became of your daughters?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

One of them works for a movie outfit up here now. She's got an office to herself, up on South Tryon. And the other one's over the ladies down at Stylecraft Packing, down here at the old Shell plant.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Going back to this strike business one more time, were there any hard feelings after that was over with in the company, from the workers?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Not as I know of.

[Interruption]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember when the electricians were going to join the strike, and somebody cut the power off and had a blackout back then?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember some of them, after all this was over with, trying to have a recall election to vote out the mayor that they had while the strike was going on, McNinch, and have a new election?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No, I don't remember nothing about that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the union that you all belonged to keep on going and help the streetcar workers out after the strike was over and everybody went back to work?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

I don't remember. I think it fell through after a while.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember any strikes in the textile mills here in 1929 or 1934?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

It seemed like there was a mill over there at north Charlotte that was on strike.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But you weren't involved in any of those.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

No.

[Interruption]

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

When the streetcars wasn't running, the city let the people with automobiles pick up people and charge them a dime apiece and take them where they wanted to go. [laughter]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Just ordinary people with cars.

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

An old T-Model's have eight or nine hanging on it. Old running boards on there all full, and they're hanging on the side. [laughter] The city let the public do that and keep the money, charge them nothing. Just charge the people a dime each.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the public get mad at anybody during the strike?

LOY CONNELLY CLONIGER:

Not as I know of.