Avoiding conflict with union opposition
East describes one instance of how he avoided conflict with opposition to unionization of tenant farmers during the early 1930s. Warned of impending violence by his friend and the Tyronza mayor, East changed the location of the union meeting and managed to still successfully get new members to join.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Clay East, September 22, 1973. Interview E-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- SUE THRASHER:
-
You were telling me about when you were living in Bartlett and you were
going to a meeting and you heard about five men who were waylaying to
meet you.
- CLAY EAST:
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Oh yeah. Well, I know…the mayor, Bob Fraser, who was a friend
of mine, come over there and told me, says, "Clay, if you
don't come back over there,
they're going to kill you.
- SUE THRASHER:
-
He was the mayor of what town?
- CLAY EAST:
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Tyronza.
- SUE THRASHER:
-
Tyronza?
- CLAY EAST:
-
Yeah. And he told me, said "I don't know what
they'd do to me if they found out I'd come over
here and told you about this, but I just couldn't set
there…I'd felt like I had my blood on your hands
if I'd set there and not told you. But they're
fixing to get you." And I told him, "Well, Bob, I sure
appreciate your coming over here and there's one thing you
can rest assurred about, no one will ever be told by me that you was
over here and told me. Of course, he's passed away now, so I
don't have to worry about him, about them getting him yet.
But, that night, I got in my car and drove over there and where I was
going to hold this meeting and I turned off before I got to
Tyronza…two miles before I got to Tyronza, at Beasley Spur
they called it. And, it was only a mile or mile and a half to this
schoolhouse. In other words, Tyronza was up here, and Beasly was down
here about two miles and this little old school was over here. Well
there was a road that run around this way from Tyronza and this road
here went out from Beasly. Well, I went over there and I was the only
one there. I held the meeting and I never held a meeting that I
didn't get a whole bunch of members signed up. I'm
not bragging or anything but I got the first
members who ever signed a card in the union. I was the man who made a
talk and told them that if you come out here to farm…
- SUE THRASHER:
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Now where was that?
- CLAY EAST:
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That was at the little Sunnyside Schoolhouse at Tyronza where we had our
first meeting. That's where the union first started.
- SUE THRASHER:
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How many people signed up for the union that night, do you remember?
- CLAY EAST:
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I would say, maybe say it was thirteen or fourteen, around fifteen. I
think that everyone there, there wasn't a big crowd there.