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

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.