Mason Lynch, Eva Helms, Myrtle Brown, and Betty Hinson Interviews

00:00:00

GEORGE STONEY: ...misled.

LYNCH: Had the - they had the strike, formed a strike there and they had to call the National Guard in to finally settle it. We would - didn't let anyone work then but, uh, but while they was getting the National Guard in and all, well, they had a man from the National Guard ,uh, stabbed one of the men that was there. I believe it was a Mr. Raleigh. They'd run across - across the street to a two-story house. They stabbed him while he was running to get protection from them. They stabbed him then.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, how old were you when that happened?

LYNCH: I was young. I was young but I can still remember it. It was – 00:01:00I'd be afraid to say what year it was.

GEORGE STONEY: It was 1934 when it happened.

LYNCH: It was? I can remember it.

GEORGE STONEY: You were how old then?

LYNCH: Twenty-five, thirty. I was about 9 or 10 years old.

GEORGE STONEY: So, people your age were talking about this, were they?

LYNCH: Yeah. I can remember my mother and Daddy talked about it. Most of the people, after the strike was over - they wanted to forget it. The mills that my mother and Daddy worked at - when they had the strike or they had trouble, the union would come in because they were trying to form a union. They would shut the mills down. The mill companies – the mill owners didn't want to have any trouble, and they wanted to take care of their people, so they'd rather shut the mill down while there was –

[clock chimes]

JAMIE STONEY: We're going to get it --

JUDY HELFAND: We're going to wait for that cuckoo clock to stop. (laughter)

00:02:00

GEORGE STONEY: It's such a pretty clock, too.

HELFAND: Jamie, do you want to come over this way a little?

GEORGE STONEY: Through that bridge where I'm not too tight.

MYRTLE BROWN: That would be –

JAMIE STONEY: Don't hit anything on the table behind you.

BROWN: Old (inaudible), they called it.

JAMIE STONEY: I see a lot of Hummels in this house.

LYNCH: Mm-hmm.

JAMIE STONEY: OK, when you folks are good.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Could you tell me about that again?

LYNCH: What, about the strike?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

LYNCH: Well, they just – they had – they was forming a union. They decided to strike, and they were shutting the mill down, and when they brought the National Guard in, they had to – had to – had trouble there. One of the men wanted to go on in the mill to work and they wouldn't let him, so he run across the street and did they – one of the guards stabbed him.

GEORGE STONEY: Why did you think they brought in the guards?

LYNCH: To keep down trouble. The people wanted – the mill owners did not want trouble. They wanted – they wanted their people to be able to work and work and take care of themselves so they'd have good people to work, and the 00:03:00mill companies tried to take care of their people.

GEORGE STONEY: After that, what kind of feeling was there in the community about unions?

LYNCH: Well, they've never had the union in any of the mills for a long time. Not many of them that did stay in town had unions in them. They – we've – they've always treated us good, and they had no desire for a union, don't --

GEORGE STONEY: Do you want to tell these ladies about how you got hired by Mr. Lineberger?

LYNCH: How? Well, I was working at the (Imperial?) and when I went to get a haircut one day up at the Belmont Barbershop - Lawrence (Helton?) cut my hair up there all the time – I got a haircut – was getting a haircut and Mr. Lineberger come in, and he was talking to Mr. Helton and he said he wanted – 00:04:00he needed to get his hair cut. He had to go – you know, had business to tend to. Lawrence told him – said, "It will be a few minutes and then I'll cut your hair." So, Mr. Lineberger was talking to me and he said, "Well, when are you going to come to work for me?" I said, "Tomorrow." He said, "Well, come on up to my office." He said, "We'll get papers filled out and get things ready." So, I went up there and talked to him and then, when I went up to talk to him, he sent me up to the – Number One Acme, which he owned and had controlling interest of it, and he sent me up to see Jim Frazier, and they put me to work that night, and I worked up there for about 22 or 23 years before I retired. Every time Mr. Lineberger came in, he'd always come by to say something to you.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell me about how Mr. – A.C. Lineberger went around to the mills?

00:05:00

LYNCH: Mr. A.C. Lineberger? He had a – he had a colored man as a chauffeur. He drove a Lincoln Zephyr. Mr. Lineberger, the old Mr., A.C. Lineberger – he walked straight as a stick. He was a small, thin man. He had – the chauffeur would take him to the mills, go in the mills, walk him around the mills, and bring him back out. Then, he always had to go around the – around the village, see how everything was, and he'd – it would take him three or four hours because if he seen you out, he had to stop and talk to you and see how you was getting along and everything was doing all right in the mill.

GEORGE STONEY: You remember Mr. Lineberger, too, do you?

MYRTLE BROWN: Oh, yeah. He was a nice fellow. He was good to his help.

JAMIE STONEY: Now, if you had a grievance or if you had something you wanted to talk to the boss about, you could go up and talk to Mr. Lineberger about it?

00:06:00

BROWN: I had some -- (inaudible), I never did. I never did have no trouble with my boss man.

JAMIE STONEY: But, he was a kind man where if you had something to talk to him about or if there was a problem, he would get involved.

BROWN: If I'd have had something to talk about, I would have. Even the lowest fellow, he'd have listened.

LYNCH: They wanted you to go to your boss man first and talk to him and try to straighten it out with the boss man, straighten it out, and then, if the boss man didn't straighten it out and you still felt like you wanted to go talk to Mr. Lineberger, feel free to go talk to him.

JAMIE STONEY: So, there was a – there was a sort of a formula for handling problems.

LYNCH: Yes.

JAMIE STONEY: Everything went up. There was a ladder, but everybody was responsible to the man in charge.

LYNCH: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: That's interesting. Now, these ladies were telling me about growing up in the mill village. Uh, could you talk about – your sister was suggesting that maybe yours was a little different. Could you talk about growing up in the mill village?

00:07:00

LYNCH: In the mill village, the, uh, children – well, we were – we were – was raised in a fence.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

LYNCH: We didn't go very many places there. Whenever we went, we had a certain time we could go and then we always had to be back. We could go down to their house, stay so long and then we had to come back. Everybody's children – they got along and played. They didn't – maybe one or two families' children at a time played together or – and we'd have ball games out at the ball field on Saturday and Sunday but everybody got along good.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, why the fence around your house?

LYNCH: Well, there was three. There's three of us children, and I had a twin sister and then one four years younger, and I don't know why except to keep us in the fence and keep us where – where they could watch us all the 00:08:00time, and we didn't go out of that fence unless they told us we could.

GEORGE STONEY: Was there a fence around the mill then?

LYNCH: No, Sir; never has been a fence around the mill, and not many people down on the mill hill had fences, but the fence controlled their children.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you have gardens there?

LYNCH: Some people had small gardens. They had small gardens around, behind their house and then they had, over across in front of the mill, they used to have a – what they called the community barn. If people there at the mill had a cow, they could keep it in the barn there. I – then, down behind where I showed you where I lived, they had the – a garage there. If people was – had enough money to and could afford a car, they could keep it in that 00:09:00garage and lock it up and go get it when they wanted and take it out.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you have a car?

LYNCH: No, Sir, no, Sir. Daddy had a car when I was small but I didn't have a car until I was 19, 20 years old.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you people have a cow?

BROWN: Yeah, we had a cow. We had a car, a Cadillac by then, yeah.

EVA HELMS: Talking about the children now – Billy, stand there – they listened to their parents. They'd tell us to go. We could go, to come back at a certain time. We was back.

GEORGE STONEY: What kind of entertainment did you have?

BROWN: Oh, we had a ball. (laughter) I had the cow. We made that. (laughter)

HELMS: Had a ball when –

LYNCH: We played baseball and softball.

BROWN: And all the children played together then, yeah.

LYNCH: Played, Mama, with Peg – Peggy.

(laughter)

HELMS: Horseshoes.

LYNCH: Hit horseshoes.

BROWN: Ball – hit ball.

00:10:00

LYNCH: Just everything. Didn't have many play toys to play with but we could – found something to play with.

BROWN: We didn't have a lot of time, did we? (laughter)

LYNCH: No.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember the first time you got a radio?

BROWN: Oh, yeah, I do. The first time I ever heard the radio – my brother, my oldest brother – he went to Charlotte one Saturday and he got one, bring it back. Oh, we thought we had, oh, we did sure love that. (laughter) We really, really played that day, we did.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember hearing Roosevelt on the radio?

BROWN: Oh, yeah, I remember hearing him, too. We used to hear any kind of a speaker to come on. My brother – he liked to hear, you know, people that's going to make important speeches, didn't he how? He'd want to hear it. Well, 00:11:00he'd make us get quiet (laughter) and listen because we –

HELMS: Well, I – every one of us stand there and know how Roosevelt – when he said the war was over.

BROWN: Oh, yes.

HELMS: Everybody had the radio on in the village down there.

BROWN: So, (inaudible) had to – to –

LYNCH: We had an old – had a Philco Radio and on Saturday nights, the – Uncle Dave (Macon?) and his crowd would come in, country music and all. The children would all gang up, so-and-so's houses – they had radios and you'd sit on the floor and you didn't speak a word or say anything. You sat there and listened to that. That was good entertainment then.

BROWN: You had to be quiet. (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, that's – that's great.

BROWN: You know, instead of having this fun, you think about that (inaudible). But, you know, kids mind. They wouldn't like to learn that.

LYNCH: Also, when President Roosevelt passed away, they brought him through here on a special train. His body was on a flat car, had the flag and 00:12:00all over it and had guards stationed on that flat car, and they slowed down through all the towns coming from – I believe it was Georgia, wasn't it?

GEORGE STONEY: Warm Springs.

LYNCH: Warm Springs. The towns and all – the cities – they had slowed down so that they'd call ahead and let people know when – what time they were coming through and everybody ganged up to see. They thought that was something to see the president coming through on a flat car as it passed away.

GEORGE STONEY: I was in Germany when that happened -

LYNCH: Were you?

GEORGE STONEY: - and I remember what a shock it was to us when we found out. Oh, my goodness, Roosevelt's gone and we've got Truman, and we didn't know what a fine president he was going to make.

HELMS: That's right.

00:13:00

LYNCH: We doubted it at the time when President Truman went in. We doubted if he could fulfill President Roosevelt's shoes and carry on. We thought maybe there'd be another Depression or something else, but there wasn't.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you – during the Depression, you had a lot of short time, didn't you?

BROWN: Yeah, sure did.

HELMS: Yeah, but it didn't bother us too much. See, we had a brother working the railroad.

BROWN: And that didn't hurt, that.

HELMS: Usually, a bus going where – but I know my mother helped a lot of people that would have really went hungry if –

BROWN: Yeah, some people then –

HELMS: In the village, you did want to get down and help the – Mason.

BROWN: Everybody did that.

LYNCH: I can remember back when I was a kid, if somebody passed away on – that lived on the hill, everybody would go set up at the house and they would bring food in and there was a lot of help to people when things like that 00:14:00happened -

BROWN: Sure did.

LYNCH: - or if they had a fire and got burned out, they – people would give them clothes and food and stuff and help them get back into the house.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, let me ask you something. We have found very few black people who worked in the mills then. Could you talk about that?

LYNCH: Well, when I first started to work, it was mostly the outside help was black, not – and not – when I was a younger, not anybody worked on the inside of the mill. You had – a janitor would come clean up the bathrooms and stuff like that but that was it. But, as far as running machinery, no, and Cleo Johnson, Eddie Rankin, and there was another one. I can't think of who he was; 00:15:00worked there for a long time. Cleo Johnson would go from the mill everyday up to the mill office to get the mail and bring it back to the mill, and he did odds and ends. He kind of worked out of his shop as a handyman and – but everybody liked him. Everybody – everybody liked him and Eddie (Bo?).

GEORGE STONEY: Did they live in, uh, Chronicle Village?

LYNCH: No, Sir. No, Sir.

BROWN: Not on the hill.

LYNCH: No, they lived –

BROWN: All the way down there.

LYNCH: They lived in the colored section up behind the funeral homes.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, when your mother was – did your mother work in the mill?

BROWN: Huh? Our mother didn't work.

GEORGE STONEY: So, that was a big help.

BROWN: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, when mothers worked in the mills, did they have other women coming in to keep house for them and that kind of thing?

00:16:00

HELMS: Yeah, they had somebody to watch their children, but I don't know if they had any –

LYNCH: We had – when we were growing up, we had a – mother and Daddy both worked at the mill. Daddy was obviously on the third shift. Uh, well, it's from 6:00 at night until 6:00 in the morning. Then – and then, uh, they had a colored woman by the name of Cherry Greer that took care of us kids while Mother worked in the morning, and she'd come in early in the morning and stay until Mother got off from work. She'd clean the house up, and cook dinner, and looked after us kids. She would – when school – in the summertime, and then in the morning, when school was going on, she'd come stay a while and then she'd go back, and then she'd come if Mother had something else to do or somewhere to go, you know, to the store and stuff, well, Cherry would stay while Mother went.

GEORGE STONEY: Did she have children of her own?

00:17:00

LYNCH: Who – Cherry?

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

LYNCH: No. No, she didn't have any children. She had been married once but her – her husband died and then she lived with her sister, and she wanted to make her a little bit of money, so – too, so she took care of us kids.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you have any idea what she got paid?

LYNCH: I don't have any idea. It couldn't be too much because the people that worked in the mill didn't make too much money there, but I don't know what it was.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever know any young colored children?

LYNCH: I knew –

GEORGE STONEY: Tell me when that truck passes.

HELFAND: Ask your question again.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah?

HELFAND: Ask your question again.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Did you ever know any young black children?

LYNCH: Yeah, I knew very few at that time. The only ones I knew was around where Cherry lived, and her sisters' children – we knew them and that was 00:18:00about it at that time.

GEORGE STONEY: But, you seemed to know her pretty well.

LYNCH: Oh, yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

LYNCH: Yeah, we knew her because she come to the house and took care of us, and then every once in a while, she'd take us up to their house and stay two or three hours, playing, and then she'd bring us back home.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, you went to church, I believe, with the Linebergers. Could you explain how that happened?

LYNCH: Well, the Linebergers started – they used to go to Mount Holly to the Lutheran Church and then they'd come to here, and most of them come to the Holy Comforter Lutheran Church, and they'd always come in. I don't remember where they – and some of them come to Sunday School but not all of them. The older people would come in for preaching, and when they'd come in, they'd always come in and sit down on the – uh – on the seat, in the pews, and then 00:19:00stay for church, and then after church was over, they'd stand out there and talk to anybody who wanted to talk to them or if you wanted to talk to them, you could talk to them and they would talk to you.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, now, that was unusual to have a Lutheran Church in a mill village.

LYNCH: It wasn't exactly in – it wasn't in the mill village. It was right on the –

BROWN: Across from my house.

GEORGE STONEY: I see.

LYNCH: -- right across here.

GEORGE STONEY: Where did most of the mill people go to church?

HELMS: Well, some were different denominations.

(multiple conversations; inaudible)

LYNCH: No, most, I think, went to, uh –

BROWN: Baptist and –

LYNCH: They went to East Belmont Baptist, Park Street Methodist -

BROWN: That's right.

LYNCH: - and the Lutherans and maybe a few of them went to First Presbyterian, which was up on the corner.

GEORGE STONEY: But, the mill didn't have anything to do with those churches.

HELMS: Oh, no, didn't have anything to do with that.

00:20:00

LYNCH: The superintendent of the mill, Mr. Maynard – he went to Park Street Methodist Church. A lot of the – a lot of the people went out there and had a few of them went to the Lutheran, East Belmont Baptist. You'd go where you wanted to. You didn't – they didn't require you to go to one church. They want you – they wanted you to go to church but they didn't require you to go to any certain church.

HELFAND: George, I have some names.

GEORGE STONEY: When you're ready, Judy.

HELFAND: Thanks. George, we're – we're on.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Uh, these are some of the people that we've got letters from who – they wrote to the National – we have from the National Archives in Washington – Mr. – from the Chronicle – Mr. A.B. Brantley. Do you remember him?

HELFAND: He was the night –

LYNCH: He was the night watchman.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

00:21:00

LYNCH: He – he's passed away now.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, he was active in the union, which – do you know why?

LYNCH: No, Sir, I don't. I don't have any idea why.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, and there's Helen Mullis.

LYNCH: Helen Mullis, I believe, was the secretary at the mill – at the mill office.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you know Helen Mullis?

BROWN: Uh-Uh. I haven't -- (inaudible) (laughter).

LYNCH: The mill office, up on the corner of East Catawba Street, the while building -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm

LYNCH: - and I believe she was the secretary that worked under there for the, uh – for the mill company or one of the secretaries.

GEORGE STONEY: That was later, wasn't it?

LYNCH: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, it's interesting that in 1934, she was the secretary of the union local.

LYNCH: I don't know anything. I don't remember that.

BROWN: No, I don't.

00:22:00

GEORGE STONEY: Ernest Flowers.

HELMS: I knowed him when I seen him and that was all.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh.

HELFAND: He – um – you know, after the strike, it seems like he was asked to be – to be evicted from – he was asked to leave his house by the mill company.

HELMS: Well, that might be but he didn't live at the Chronicle, did he? He lived at the Nash home.

LYNCH: He lived with the Nash's.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh. Now, do you remember any of these – any people having to leave the mill houses?

LYNCH: Not on – not on account of the strike, no, no.

BROWN: I don't know.

GEORGE STONEY: What happened if – what would happen that caused them to have to leave the mill houses?

BROWN: Well, you had to work in the mill to own the house.

LYNCH: You worked in the mill. If you worked in the mill and they had a house open, they would let you rent the house, but you – you – whenever you 00:23:00quit working there and your family quit working there, you had to – you had to move.

GEORGE STONEY: I see.

BROWN: Yeah, that's how it was.

LYNCH: I think back, to start with, it was – oh, was it 20 cents a room?

BROWN: It wasn't much.

LYNCH: It wasn't much. I believe it was 20 or 25 cents a room.

BROWN: Yeah, (inaudible), not a lot, this I –

LYNCH: When they put power in, the mill company – you didn't pay for your power there to start with and later on, they put meters on the houses and then the, uh, the master mechanic would come around and read your meters, and then they would take your electric bills out of your paycheck.

BROWN: Mm-hmm. I remember that, too. (laughter)

LYNCH: Ma'am?

BROWN: I remember that, too.

LYNCH: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you – did you trade at the mill store?

BROWN: Uh, we didn't – well, you could trade, you could buy your groceries anywhere you wanted to. Now, there were a lot of people, I think, did and I can say up with the truth but, you know, a lot of people told me they did. 00:24:00We did.

LYNCH: They had to. The store was Stowe Mercantile.

HELMS: Yeah.

LYNCH: They had the ladies' clothes, men's clothes, work clothes, dress clothes, and all that if you could afford them. They also had a grocery store. Some of the people that wanted to or needed to, uh, they could go up there and buy their groceries up there or buy their clothes there and then they would take so much money out of their check every paycheck until they got it paid for. Mr. Earl Horsley and Gram Dickson were the ones that I remember worked there and Raymond Garrison.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember any difference, uh, talk of the difference between the prices in one store or another?

00:25:00

LYNCH: No. It was all about pretty well the same back in the younger –

GEORGE STONEY: It's interesting going back in history, uh, the Stowe's were merchants first and then they built the cotton mill, but they were starting as merchants, as your book told you, yeah.

LYNCH: And, also, the – one of the men, a Mr. Pruitt, was brought in here. He worked at the store, used to be – see, Belmont was called Garibaldi to start with, and that's when they had the store up there – the Stowe Brothers' store, and then people went up there and bought – if they wanted to, they could go to any store they wanted to and buy groceries but they could charge them there and then they'd take them out of your check. Well, then, Mr. Pruitt – they decided to open the Bank of Belmont and the Stowes, the 00:26:00Linebergers, the Howes, and Dicksons, I believe, was the one - ones finally ended up opening the bank, and if you had any money left, you could go up and put it in the bank and save you a little bit. If you needed some money, you'd go up and talk to the banker, which was Mr. Pruitt, and he'd see fit he'd let you have a little bit of money. If he didn't see fit, he wouldn't. But, they had to know you pretty well before you got any.

(laughter)

JAMIE STONEY: So, more often than not, he didn't see fit.

(laughter)

LYNCH: No, and a lot of times, if he didn't see fit, he would bring it up before the Stowes and the Linebergers and if he had a doubt or a question, he'd bring it up to them and they would get together on it before he'd let you have money.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, I think we've got –

HELFAND: Can we just ask one thing?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

00:27:00

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah, my question just right now and based on that – so you might get a tap on the shoulder from an overseer saying, you know, is there something wrong or what's the reason why you might need some extra money. You know, if the bank talked – Stowe talked to the bank and everybody was talking to each other about the money that you wanted to borrow, it seems like everybody knows about the money you want to borrow but you.

LYNCH: No, the – just the – it was confidential. The banker and the Stowes and the Linebergers were the only ones that knew about it and the head lady at the bank.

JAMIE STONEY: Judy?

HELFAND: Yeah, it's just – you know, we've been travelling all over the south, you know, to try to – um – we've been getting the history of the cotton mill village and the workers and what your life was like, and part of our movie is looking at the history of that early organizing into unions in 1933 and '34 and that big strike, and we're having a real difficult time finding anybody that had joined the union. We're finding lots of people that didn't, 00:28:00and we're having a tough time finding anyone that did, and we know that in Belmont, there were hundreds of people that joined this – you know, the union local, and they came out in a big parade. Where do you think they all are?

LYNCH: Most of them at this time are dead.

HELMS: Uh, that's true.

LYNCH: Most of them.

HELMS: Up the road here is dead – most of them.

LYNCH: We didn't need the – we didn't need the strike at the mill, at the Chronicle Mill. The Linebergers were too good to us. We – we didn't – we didn't need it.

BROWN: They didn't have to do that. They run off, too, you know, no joking about that thing. I worked down there when I was a kid. Well, I wasn't the only one, all the young'uns – they were just as nice to you as they could be.

HELFAND: So, where do you think all these union members went?

HELMS: I don't know.

LYNCH: Your guess is as good as mine. They just –

BROWN: They died.

00:29:00

LYNCH: Well, they passed away and if they didn't, they left and they left on their own. They didn't make them leave but they left on their own.

BROWN: I lived at the corner for years and years with this. I've been here too long.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, thank you.

BROWN: Nice to –

JAMIE STONEY: This is room tone 1001. We are – OK, who's house are we in?

M2: We're in Belmont, North Carolina. It is the 29th of July.

GEORGE STONEY: And your name is –

BROWN: Myrtle Brown (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: Myrtle Brown and –

HELMS: Eva Helms.

LYNCH: Mason Lynch.

HELMS: That's my (sister?).

HELFAND: One second. We just want –

M1: Thirty-seconds, clock ticking.

HELFAND: - a couple more seconds.

HELMS: Those – uh, they get to you that way.