Eagle Mill Reunion 3 and Robert Moses Interview 1

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[silence; nighttime - camera pans back to front; cuts to daytime scene outside WGAS 14Z0 KC radio station (beginning of the Robert Moses interview) - camera pans across landscape and around radio station]

[silence; interior of the radio station; shot of George Stoney and Robert Moses at radio broadcast desk - audio begins at 00:26:44]

ROBERT MOSES: I've got a friend that come in about - I guess they come about 7:30, quarter of 8:00, and he always bring me coffee. He retired from Firestone up in - quite a guy. Quite a guy. (music and inaudible voices in background) 00:28:00OK, there you have it. I've got to remind you that this is WGAS Radio, studios in South Gastonia, North Carolina, where the time now is 6:30. Six-thirty, and of course those of you who have your ears on, want you to know that we've got special guests in the studio with us this morning, and they're going to be spotlighting some of our Gaston County leading businesses, like textile. You know, this at one time was the textile center of the world. Might still be textile orientated to a great degree. You know, if you're not in textiles you're textile related somehow, and that's been - I can 00:29:00remember when I was - first went into the job market, we had 105 textile mills in Gaston County. A hundred and five in Gaston County. That's a lot of textile mills. So everybody worked in the mill - everybody but us. (laughs) We worked for the people that worked in the mill. That's the way it was wasn't it? You know it. OK, let's be factual about it. We've got some special information we're gonna pass along to you and some we're going to try to get, and of course compiling a little information, be able to pass it along to the future generations. Is that all right? OK. I'm gonna give you the opportunity in a little while to give 'em a call and kind of talk with 'em after we expose some of what we have here to you. Haven't got it all together yet, but we will before the morning's over. You know how I am, don't you? Well we'll do it just that way, and if you want to come down and pay a visit, come on. Dave William will be here, I know. Dave will be in with the coffee in a little while. And Mildred, you don't have anything to do with what else he brings, OK? Because the doctor will usually ask me how I feel when I walk in, 00:30:00and you know, I'm - I'm getting to the place where I think I ought to tell him, that's what I came to him for; to find out how I feel. I'm paying him this good money and he want to ask me all these questions. How 'bout that? Don't tell him I said that though. He might be listening too, and if he is, I hope he just act like I didn't. Let's go a little more music here and we'll be back with you in a moment. (music plays) OK. Now, you folk want to give these people some information? Just tell 'em exactly what you're doing and what you want to do?

GEORGE STONEY: Yes.

MOSES: That'd be great.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Just tell 'em that we're doing a film about the history of textiles, particularly in the early '30s. As you know, the history of 00:31:00textiles have been told almost entirely from the point of view of the owners and -

MOSES: Right, right.

GEORGE STONEY: - managers and -

MOSES: A lady called me last night and I was talking to her and says, you know, the Stowes and the Pharrs, they are building some big something now, and they're chargin' I think $25 for you to go through the thing, but the government - the federal government seemed to be subsidizing - well they're really makin' money. They're makin' money again over - I don't know.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: But you - you know, the man that's got the money he's always in the market for makin' more. Seem like the more he gets the more he wants.

GEORGE STONEY: (laughs) That's right.

MOSES: And it's just one of those things. But she was saying that she worked for 50 cents a day - (record skips) they stick up on you sometimes (laughter). 00:32:00Just a little - a little bit of weight on it will take it right on home.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: So um, you know, she said that, uh, the old man, he just really didn't want to pay that 50 cent, and of course, the wife, she would slip a little extra in, you know. But 50 cents a day?

GEORGE STONEY: Well what we find is that, as Mr. Bruce Graham is tellin' ya, he was one of the few blacks allowed to work in the mills, and I asked him whether any black loom fixtures or weavers, and he says no.

MOSES: No.

GEORGE STONEY: And when I say why -

MOSES: I can remember that.

GEORGE STONEY: When I said why, he said, you tell me. (laughter) And he's got - we got a nice little interchange there. Well now, he - in 1934 he was working 00:33:00at The Eagle and he -

JUDITH HELFAND: Can I have a second? I just want to extend myself.

MOSES: Sure.

HELFAND: George, before you can do that again -

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, that's fine. OK.

HELFAND: Listen -

MOSES: Do you need a chair?

HELFAND: No I'm OK. What I was thinking was that, you know, you might interview Mr. Stoney, you know, as an intro into -

GEORGE STONEY: Well -

HELFAND: Do you want to give him the article?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, I'll do it. Uh, the article about us. Yeah, OK.

MOSES: And your name is?

GEORGE STONEY: George Stoney. I'll give you a card in just a moment.

MOSES: Stoney.

HELFAND: And you - highlight our 1-800 number.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, OK. You may have seen this article in the Gastonia Observer a few months ago.

MOSES: The Gastonia Observer, I give them credit for a lot of good things and - oh. All right, there you have it, and of course around - in a few minutes, matter of fact, we're going to introduce to you or present to ya, one of our very fine young men who is going to make things better for our living area by exposing some of the things of the past. You know, this is what makes it good; when you understand where you're coming from, you can always get where you're going. It's pretty rough for you to go somewhere you don't know where, or you don't know how. OK. So we have a Mr. George Stoney in the studios with us, and they're making a film on the - really the roots of Gaston 00:35:00County's textile industry from the standpoint of facts, not fiction. And of course, when you sometime present the facts, it creates a little bit of stuff, but that's all right. We can deal with that, OK? So you stay with us. We gonna give you all this good stuff just in a few moments. He just passed to me a little clipping from the Gastonia Observer that was done a few weeks ago, called "Strange Kind of Amnesia." So you know, we all suffer from it when we want to, don't we? Don't we though, I'll tell you. But every once in a while it surfaces too, and then we have to deal with it on that particular, of which we don't like. But who cares about what we like or what we don't like at times? Nobody. OK. Let me let you know some of our sponsors this morning, that's kind of in charge of what's going on here; Armstrong Beauty and Barber Supplies. They're at 413 South Broad Street you know, right there in front of the telephone office. That's where they are. Matter of fact, they cover the whole block. The front of the building is on Broad and the back of 00:36:00it's over on Oakland. So you can enter or exit from either and you just go into the nice unique building sittin' in the middle of the block there, that's where you'll find the goody, OK? Armstrong Beauty and Barber. Talked with Ray this week. We had a little - a little break together. I'm not gonna tell him what Ray ate because he wasn't supposed to eat what I - he was eating, and um, I was enjoying what I eating. (laughs) Ray, I'm not gonna tell it, OK? I know you accuse me of tellin' everything I know, but I'm not gonna tell that. So you go ahead and - but you don't you do that often, because it will tell on itself. I'll tell you, OK? All right. Ray Armstrong Beauty and Barber Supplies, right here in our city. And of course if you're in Shelby they're on Marion, and they're trucks rolling all over the Carolinas. They'll go farther than I if you give 'em a call and let them know what's on your mind. Ray Armstrong, taking care of business. He's a 00:37:00head hunter. (music plays) OK, I'm gonna cue this tape up here.

GEORGE STONEY: You may have to ride the volume a little bit because he's much quieter than I am on it.

MOSES: That's all right. We'll pump it up. That's the one thing about this. I can turn it up here, do we. (inaudible) OK.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, the way we got hold of Mr. Graham was that he - we've been doing a lot of research in the National Archives in Washington. At the National Recovery Administration in '34 when Roosevelt came in, they said that hours should be cut to eight from 11 or 12 -

MOSES: Hold on a minute. I'm gonna put you on. We'd don't - we gonna - all that talk you're talkin', even though you been talkin' several time, you're talking right in here.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, fine.

HELFAND: George, can you move your seat up a little?

GEORGE STONEY: Sure.

MOSES: Jamie, would that be bad for you?

JAMIE STONEY: Spin it around and slide in a little closer and clock yourself.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

JAMIE STONEY: Ten o'clock just a little bit.

GEORGE STONEY: Shucks, OK.

JAMIE STONEY: So the camera records that.

HELFAND: I was just like to get set up a little bit too, OK?

MOSES: Yeah, come on in. Wherever you wish.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

MOSES: That's about right. Came about 13 years ago from South Carolina, somebody was doing some research in regard to black music, and I was explaining 00:39:00to them that I'd guarantee them in the next 10 years they would have all kind of a black (inaudible), just like I'm - and I guess now we've got 30 stations - there wasn't any station at that time doin' it. So I was pointin' out to him - he had a little boy who had just finished school and he was tryin' to get into it -

GEORGE STONEY: 1980.

MOSES: I'd say it's been about 20 years ago.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, yeah. That's right.

JAMIE STONEY: Phone's ringin'.

MOSES: Good morning. Christian radio. (phone call) Fine, [Floree?]. How are you this morning? Well good. Yeah. Yes - seven o'clock. Right. Uh-huh. 00:40:00Right. She's - right. OK. OK Dear. All right. Good morning. Christian radio.

HELFAND: George?

MOSES: OK. All right. Floree just called checkin' on you. All right. All right. Mm-hm. My wife had open-heart surgery and uh - she had five bypasses - and of course I tell her to call me every once in a while, let me know what's - what's happening. I don't leave her too long. But she's doing OK. Yes. I was - these folk wrote this article something like 12, 13 years ago, and you 00:41:00wouldn't believe - and I really didn't predict it like that, but I know that wherever there's - again, back to the power structure. Wherever there's money, you can believe you don't have any problem in getting' folk into it.

GEORGE STONEY: That's right.

MOSES: And the people who got the money, they capitalize on getting' more money. So they - they use you till they use you up.

HELFAND: George, can I ask you, when you find the files you want you put the rest of them down so they don't rub on your microphone -

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Right.

HELFAND: - and you put them in a safe place?

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Right. Thank you.

HELFAND: Here's - this is one other.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

HELFAND: This is the 'nother one from Greensborough.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh, yeah.

HELFAND: And then you have the one from our friend here in -

MOSES: May I keep this? Oh, you -

GEORGE STONEY: We can get you a copy of that.

MOSES: Well, I'd like to have a copy.

GEORGE STONEY: Sure, we'll mail you a copy of that or send you -

HELFAND: Now one thing that you might - you want to tell people - George can tell you about our 1-800 number.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hm.

MOSES: Well we'll - you can do whatever. You can help you.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, sure.

MOSES: We're just in here together.

GEORGE STONEY: Sure.

MOSES: And we'll expose anything. It really doesn't matter. We'll cut away here and just do whatever we wish to do.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hm.

MOSES: Unless you want me to give it to you and leave and go take a break?

GEORGE STONEY: No, no. Absolutely not.

MOSES: I'll turn it on and I'll go outside and leave.

GEORGE STONEY: No, no.

HELFAND: Please, uh-uh. (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: Don't do that to us. Don't do that to us.

JAMIE STONEY: Don't want to do stacks and wax for making tracks?

MOSES: (laughs)

JAMIE STONEY: I do a good Frankie Crocker.

MOSES: Fifteen minutes before seven o'clock and I like that last one there; "Jesus is Love," OK. OK, Mr. Stoney, he's here. Mr. George Stoney and 00:43:00his associates, and of course he's got some information to pass along to us, some questions to ask us, and a whole lot of good stuff. And of course we're gonna let him too, because we enjoy getting' tangled up with good stuff. Don't you? I tell you, Floree will appreciate your call and your interest, and of course we want you to know that you can give - if [Autoway?] is not listening - I'm almost sure he is - but if he's not listening, you ought to pass along to him because he was an old textile man, and this of course is dealing with textile, which is - has been the roots of our livelihood in the area and, not only this but all over the world. Textile has stood out, and Gaston County has been playing a leading role in it, but all of us have had the opportunity to be exposed, as we should have been, but we played a major part in what has happened in our area. OK, Mr. George Stoney, and who are you with?

GEORGE STONEY: We are making a movie supported by the Southern States Humanities Council of North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, and they are interested in filling out the history of textiles. As you know, the history of textiles has been told mostly from the point of view of the owners and the manufacturers and the people who made the machinery, and well, the cloth. But you very seldom hear about the people who sweat to make that cloth, the workers, the people who lived in the villages. And so, we're trying to tell that story to complete the history.

MOSES: OK. I can see now that what you really need is some of these elderly people who worked in those areas to come forward and give you some information.

GEORGE STONEY: That's right.

MOSES: Oh, right.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, we're concentrating on the events of the early '30s. That is when Roosevelt came in and the people who had been working 11, 12 hours 00:45:00a day were able to work just eight hours a day. Now, we were out just yesterday talking with Bruce Graham. He's a fellow 85 years old -

MOSES: OK.

GEORGE STONEY: - who told us that he worked for 11 hours a day, and when Roosevelt came in and made it eight, he could go home and farm, too.

MOSES: (laughs) Well now, is this tape we have here?

GEORGE STONEY: This is a tape of Bruce Graham.

MOSES: OK.

GEORGE STONEY: I was talking and you'll hear what he says about the - working in textiles.

MOSES: OK. Well let's run this tape and see what he's gotta say and we'll come back and discuss this some more. OK. I didn't think I had it queued up right - at the right spot, but that's all right.

(Graham recording begins in the background - mostly inaudible - not transcribed)

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. We're out there on his hog [slathe?] on his farm. Got a beautiful place.

MOSES: But at 85 years old...

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: You can talk. I've got it all - I've got the part off here -

JAMIE STONEY: You have - you've got a live mic here.

MOSES: Oh, I'm sorry.

JAMIE STONEY: No, I'm sorry. I'm getting you guys.

GEORGE STONEY: It's coming on good volume, is it?

(Graham recording continues in the background - mostly inaudible - not transcribed)

HELFAND: Can we hear it in here?

MOSES: Mm-hm. Uh, there's another radio on the other side where. Might be able to pump that speaker there up some more.

(Graham recording continues in the background - mostly inaudible - not transcribed)

MOSES: Anyway, I think I know this Graham family in Belmont.

HELFAND: They live in Gastonia.

MOSES: Well I - but they're originally out of the Belmont area, the Grahams?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: Yeah - well, between Belmont and Gastonia, down Ratchford Road, we call it.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: Yeah, they got a lot of farm land down in there.

(Graham recording continues in the background - mostly inaudible - not transcribed)

GEORGE STONEY: I think you can cut it there.

HELFAND: Wait, maybe this is good.

GEORGE STONEY: No, not so (inaudible).

MOSES: Just let me know when.

GEORGE STONEY: That's - yeah. That's it, yeah.

MOSES: OK. There you have a little bit of an interview from uh, one of our very fine elderly citizens who made his whole life around the textile, and now 85, 87 years old and is still able to remember and talk about things that a lot of us don't even know about. So these are the things that I think Brother George Stoney is trying to get together and expose to our future generation so that they can appreciate exactly what is what. You know if you don't know where you're going - if you don't know where you came from - I've told you this many and many times - there's no way in the world for you to get where 00:51:00you're going, OK? So, you out there if you give me a call or give me some information - matter of fact, he has an 800 number here. If you get your pen or your pencil or give me a call a little later on, I'll give it back - give it to ya, you'll be able to call and help him secure the information he needs to make this film. I don't know, he's talked to Brother Bruce Graham, and I thought of [Katy?] and [Nellie?] and [Scoffield?] and all those Grahams down Ratchford Road in the Belmont area. Big Sis, you better give me a holler here. If you don't, I'm gonna tell the preacher, OK? (laughs) Let me know if you know anything about Brother Bruce, OK, and if you do, then we're gonna get us some more information. How about that? All right. Always tryin' to do something to make things better for us, mankind. All right? OK. We'll be back shortly to talk with you some more. You got anything else you want to say right now?

GEORGE STONEY: I think that we want to hear from as many old time textile workers 00:52:00as we possibly can.

MOSES: I'm sure that - you know, my mind runs to Brother Whitfield. He's one of our elderly citizens who worked in textile. And as I said, Williams will be in here in a little while and he was a textile worker for Firestone, retired from there. And I tell ya, most of these elderly people who really went through the bull pens by the sweat of - has passed on.

GEORGE STONEY: That's what - that's what Mr. Graham was telling us.

MOSES: Right. Well you see, I can remember quite well - I didn't work in a textile mill but I worked for Victor Travelers, who supplied the travelers for these mills, and I was in and out of 'em quite frequently, but that was it. I was just in there and out. And of course, there was a lot of things that I observed even in my travel.

GEORGE STONEY: Well you see, this changes that have taken place, and there've been a lot of changes. You've got 00:53:00blacks in the mills now in almost every position.

MOSES: Right, right.

GEORGE STONEY: But that didn't come easy.

MOSES: It certainly didn't.

GEORGE STONEY: And one of the things we want to tell about is what people like Bruce did to stand up for themselves.

MOSES: Right.

GEORGE STONEY: Mr. Graham, uh see, in 1935 he had the courage to write this letter to Washington -

MOSES: How about that.

GEORGE STONEY: - protesting his conditions. And he signed it and they said, may we use your name if necessary, and he said yes.

MOSES: All right.

GEORGE STONEY: Now this was something we found in the National Archives in 1934, and his family knew nothing about it. He remembered it. He remembered the white man who helped him, encouraged him to write this.

MOSES: Right.

GEORGE STONEY: Another fellow in the mill. But it's interesting that he hadn't told this to his children. And what we're trying to do is to say to these old people, look, you have something. Your fight is important to your grandchildren.

MOSES: I can see. I can see. I'll tell you, even - even - you know, I look 00:54:00at our children and our society even in these days, so many of them can't remember 25 years ago when Martin Luther King just merely said look, I'm gonna support this lady because she's worked all day too and she's tired and she's sittin' down, she's paying her dues, and you want her to get up and move. And she says, I'm not gonna move. You know, a lot of 'em don't remember that. So it's nice to kind of run a research on your history and know what's going on. We'll be back in a small sized bit. It's four minutes now before seven o'clock, with more. Give us a call. (music plays)

HELFAND: You know what? Do we want the music in the background?

JAMIE STONEY: It's up to you.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, yeah.

JAMIE STONEY: Can you turn down the studio monitor for - I - well now here we go. Look, it's natural.

HELFAND: All right.

MOSES: What are you doing?

HELFAND: I was - nothing.

JAMIE STONEY: We're arguing.

MOSES: (laughs)

JAMIE STONEY: I - (inaudible) she says, "Turn the sound down."

MOSES: I'll tell you, that's somethin'.

GEORGE STONEY: Judy found that in the National Archives.

MOSES: (chuckles) Well the name of the game is survival, and so many times so many of us who was oppressed, you had to do something to survive. I can remember my father coming home from Firestone Mill. He worked 12 hours a day, and he had a little brown envelope about as big as this - might be a little bigger - and it had $9.41 on it. Oh, I thought that was somethin'. He come 00:56:00home with that cash money in that thing in his bib overalls. Oh, it - well, we were living good because we - everything we ate was on the farm.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MOSES: And there were six of us. Mother died when I was 12. I was the older. And dad wanted to make sure that we all at least finished high school. And I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer and he told me point blank, he says, I can't send you to school for that. I don't have the money. But if you'll just help me get the others through, that's all I ask of you. So I went to work. And my youngest brother is a doctor. He's Vice President of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and he's 54 years old. There's two years difference in all of our ages. So, I'm - he'll be 65 in September. I was 65 in May. [audio is poor] And I don't have anything, and none too much, but 00:57:00I've gotten along pretty good. At 65 and the only thing I've done is lost one eye, and I wouldn't have lost it if I had any sense. But I keep messin' with it and messin' with it - with the both of them, and of course this one gave me so much trouble they put it out. Then I wouldn't let 'em bother the other one anymore and I got a long pretty good with it. I should have left it alone in the first place. But when you've got more money than you've got sense, you do foolish things I guess. (laughter) Spent all that money on that, about $50,000 on an eye and then lost it - lose it.

GEORGE STONEY: But that's a remarkable glimpse into history, isn't it?

MOSES: I'll tell you, that's something. It's courage.

GEORGE STONEY: Hm, courage.

MOSES: It's courage.

GEORGE STONEY: And that's what we want - we - that's why we want to get these old people to come forward, you see.

MOSES: And you've got a lot of 'em who might, and you've got a lot of 'em who won't.

GEORGE STONEY: Sure.