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Oral History Interview with Millie Tripp, August 12, 1994. Interview K-0112. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    Millie Tripp spent forty years at the White Furniture Factory in Mebane, North Carolina, joining the company out of high school in 1950 and staying there until moving to the company's corporate office in 1990. Tripp was one of a handful of employees to keep her job after the plant closed. In this interview, she describes her long tenure at the factory, the challenges of being a working single mother, and her response to the plant closing and the merger that preceded it, including her decision to commute for an hour to her new workplace. This interview presents a potentially useful look at the working life of a single mother in the changing South.
    Excerpts
  • A single mother with a full-time job needs help
  • Decline in product quality presages a takeover
  • Holding onto her job through a merger and a plant closing
  • Weathering a plant closing through friendships with coworkers
  • A community of workers outlasts their workplace
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • Furniture industry and trade--North Carolina
  • Furniture workers--North Carolina
  • White Furniture Company
  • North Carolina--Social conditions
  • Women--Employment--North Carolina--History--20th century
  • Tripp, Millie
  • 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.