Bertha Morris Interview

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAN: Your name and where you live?

BERTHA MORRIS: Bertha Morris and I live at 45 east Magnolia Drive, Newnan Georgia.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses going to work in the mill.

Keywords: mill villages; spinners; spinning; women mill workers

Subjects: Child labor; Newnan (Ga.); Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934)

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Do you, do you remember when Roosevelt came in?

BERTHA MORRIS: I don't think so. I remember when he was president.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discussed how she did not remember a lot about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but instead talks about being a teenager.

Keywords: National Recovery Administration; women mill workers

Subjects: Child labor; Child labor--Law and legislation; New Deal (1933-1939); Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945; United States. National Recovery Administration

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: How hard was the work? Was it really hard?

BERTHA MORRIS: Yeah it was really hard.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses working as a spinner in the cotton mill.

Keywords: spinning; stretch-out; women mill workers

Subjects: Textile factories; Textile workers

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Tell me about the about the village and how strict it was.

BERTHA MORRIS: I don't remember too much about the village.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha discusses the realtionship between mill workers and mill managers, education, and what it was like to be a teenager in the 1930s.

Keywords: education; mill managers

Subjects: Religion; Women textile workers; Working class--Education; Working class--Social life and customs

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Tell me about the lint, what was that like?

BERTHA MORRIS: Yeah that lint it was just flying all around and you breath it and it would get in your nose, get in your eyes.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses the working condtions in the mill when she started and how its changed.

Keywords: lintheads; mill buildings; spinning; women mill workers

Subjects: Textile workers; Wages--Women

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND:Um I've heard a lot of people use a term, its a rather ugly term, linthead.

BERTHA MORRIS: Hmmm.

HELFAND: To describe cotton mill people, and they that that was an insult.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses perceptions of cotton mill workers and life on the mill village.

Keywords: lintheads; mill managers; mill villages; paternalism

Subjects: Funeral rites and ceremonies; Newnan (Ga.); Textile workers; Working class; Working class women--Family relationships

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Did, did any-- when the mill went on-- the mill would sometimes go on short time--

BERTHA MORRIS: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses how people survived on short time, the role of the WPA in that, and discusses her family.

Keywords: women mill workers

Subjects: Food; New Deal (1933-1939); Working class women

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: I wonder if people ever --part of our project is trying to understand that event in 1934 because, I'm not sure if you know it was the largest single industry strike in the history of the history of the United States.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses why she remembers so little about the textile workers' strike of 1934.

Keywords: picket lines; women mill workers

Subjects: Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934)

Partial Transcript: BERTHA MORRIS: A few years back then made a lot of difference. You know now if you see a teenager, if they're just 13 and you see another teenager that's 17, well there not too much difference in that.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses how teenagers have changed since she was one.

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Do you have any old pictures of your family, or here in the mill village, or--

BERTHA MORRIS: No I don't think I have any old-- I haven't got any old pictures I don't think.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses the differences between her childhood and those of children in the 1990s, and her family

Keywords: photographs

Subjects: Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934); Working class women--Family relationships

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: What, what, what is your fondest memory inside of the mill, working in there?

BERTHA MORRIS: Uh, I honestly don't know.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha discusses being followed by the bee-do man at the mill, and how her family transitioned from agricultural work to industrial work.

Keywords: boll weevils; mill villages; stretch-out

Subjects: Newnan (Ga.); Rural-urban migration

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: One person that I spoke with whose from, she's not from East Newnan, she's from Mill Number One, the old mill.

BERTHA MORRIS: The old mill.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris and Judith Helfand discuss evictions from the mill village as well as people in the Newnan area that might remember the strike.

Keywords: eviction from mill village houses

Subjects: Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934)

Partial Transcript: BERTHA MORRIS:-- ing. See the men, when our spinning frames would get full, the little bobbins would get full of thread, then they have to come along and take all them off, put on the empty bobbins.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris talks about meeting her husband, getting married, and marriage customs in the mill village.

Keywords: paternalism; spinning; women mill workers

Subjects: Marriage; Marriage customs and rites; Women textile workers; Working class women--Family relationships

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Did, did your job change as you stayed there over the years?

BERTHA MORRIS: Yeah it changed.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses her career as textile worker, corperate paternalism, and the impacts of the Great Depression and World War II.

Keywords: mill villages; paternalism; spinners; spinning; winders

Subjects: Great Depression; Textile factories; Women textile workers; World War (1939-1945)

Partial Transcript: BERTHA MORRIS: They was talking about, you know, how they lived. And they could tell you a whole lot about how they live.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses her and her family's relationship to the textile industry,

Keywords: mill villages

Subjects: Rural-urban migration; Textile workers; Working class women--Family relationships; Working class--Education

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Is there anything that, when you think of the mill village, what comes to your mind.

Segment Synopsis: Bertha Morris discusses what she remembers about living in the mill village.

Keywords: mill villages

Subjects: Food