RUBY BELK NEWELL: And our oldest daughter, she worked for her husband;
they've got a demolition landfill and she works for him. And Donna works in Winston Salem; she works for the (inaudible) industries.GEORGE STONEY: Judy, when you get set.
HELFAND: We're set.
NEWELL: Now what?
STONEY: I'm going to get you to tell us once again the story of this picture
and the rip because I want to be sure we get it kind of tight so that we can get the whole thing just from the beginning, just as though you never told it to us before.MARYANNE BELK SMITH: Now it's your turn.
NEWELL: I forgot what I said to start with.
STONEY: Well you don't have to remember that. Just --
JUDITH HELFAND: Well excuse me, could you turn that light back on?
00:01:00HERMAN: This one?
HELFAND: Yes please.
HERMAN: I thought y'all were through; I'm sorry.
STONEY: Thank you.
HERMAN: Go to your room Herman. (laughter)
STONEY: And don't flush the toilet. (laughter)
NEWELL: It's like I told that (inaudible) when I was working up there a
policeman came in and said, "Can I use your phone?" and I said, "Yes, flush it when you use it." (laughter) This guy --STONEY: Ready Judy?
NEWELL: Turn your picture around
HELFAND: Yeah.
STONEY: OK.
NEWELL: I had just come in from town or somewhere and this guy came in and told
us his name was Kenneth [Witsit?] and he would like to make a picture of our family to be put in the paper in New York City. So he got us all lined up and as I said before Earl had just a little tear across one of the knees of his pants and he grabs it and rips it and he said, "That will make a better 00:02:00picture. What we want to do is let the people up north know how the people down south are faring during this strike." So, that's what we did.STONEY: How did you feel about that?
NEWELL: I didn't like it right then because I wasn't ready for something
like that. (laughter) If they'd've given me time to kind of take it all in I wouldn't have minded but you can see from the sourpuss look on my face. (laughter)STONEY: Now how do you feel about what your father did during that time?
NEWELL: I'm proud of him; proud of the fact that he wanted to do it.
STONEY: You might tell us what he did.
NEWELL: Well, he went out and gathered up vegetables and anything that farmers
would give him -- potatoes, onions and carrots and green beans -- just anything 00:03:00-- and he'd go 'bout once or twice a week down to the country and get a bunch of vegetables and then he'd go 'round to bakeries and they'd give him bread and cakes and cookies and just whatever they happened to have. And then he'd take it all out to the store and put it upstairs and they had like a commissary upstairs and he'd tell them that anybody that wanted it to go out and get what they needed. They give him canned milk and I'd stock up. Some of the stores would even give him canned goods -- like dented cans or something -- stack it up. But he sure did a lot toward feeding a bunch of those people and keeping their hair cut and --STONEY: Tell us about the haircut.
NEWELL: People would come out on Saturday -- starting early Saturday morning --
and he'd take his straight chair out and set it out up there. Momma would let 00:04:00him have a sheet and he'd put a sheet around them and he'd cut all their hair and he'd get one, get him out, get another one. He'd finally get -- about lunchtime -- he'd be finished with all the haircuts.STONEY: Do you have any pictures of your father doing that?
SMITH: Cutting hair? Nope. No 'cause momma didn't really take that many
pictures back when we was small 'cause like I said I've only found one that I've got -- I was 13 years old -- another one when I was about 10 -- it's about the only ones that I've ever found that -- now if I could've found my Aunt Betty's oldest sister's trunk -- if I could've got a hold of that -- I would've got me some pictures. (inaudible) that was his oldest half-sister and she kept a trunk and she was like myself -- she kept newspaper clippings and pictures and her bibles. In fact she was one who had proof how old my daddy was 00:05:00before he could draw his social security. That he was born.STONEY: Well you know so many of us keep reading in the books and so forth that
southern workers can't do anything for themselves; that's one of the reasons I'm so pleased to hear this kind of thing. Could you talk about that?NEWELL: Well, I told you -- that's about all I could tell you about because my
dad worked hard. I mean when he wasn't at the mill working, he was out on somebody's car fixing the car for them and when he'd get through they'd say, "How much do I owe you John?" And he'd say, "You don't owe me nothing. Maybe I can get you to do something to me sometime." And things like this -- and momma -- she had two doctors especially -- Dr. Ben Matthews and Dr. Gallup -- if some woman was having a baby, he'd call momma -- send somebody after momma -- and she'd go help him bring that baby into the world. 00:06:00If a kid got hurt, she'd go help the doctor because then the doctors came out to the house and this one little girl got her whole heel practically cut off -- stepped on a broken coke bottle -- and they called momma and she went down there and had to hold that kids foot while the doctor sewed her heel back on. So, she did all the nursing around there; anybody was sick, they'd call momma.HELFAND: What do you feel when you look at these pictures? Take a look through
them and you see people really standing up and doing something that we've never -- how come we've never heard of this before? Look through all of this.SMITH: If you think back like we was saying -- these people -- my parents, our
00:07:00neighbors -- we did -- as kids we didn't know anything that was going on --NEWELL: Nobody told us anything.
SMITH: Our parents did not believe in solving your problems with the children;
they were solved between the adults. We went out, we played, we'd go play hide and seek, hopscotch, jump rope, whatever have you, or sit on the front porch and sing some stupid little old songs of some sort -- don't ask me what they are because I don't remember 'em. (laughter) But then we had places -- things to do -- and we could stay out at night -- where children of today couldn't do.HELFAND: But look at these pictures - Ruby -- you're 16 years old -- I'm
just talking -- even looking back right now at these photographs of all these people trying to change the course of their life. When we show these pictures to people, they are just stunned -- and you happen to be in them.NEWELL: Well tell them they shouldn't be stunned because that was the happiest
00:08:00days of our lives. People of the day -- and I'll speak for myself -- you're miserable -- you're miserable because you go to the store, everything (inaudible) four sheets to the wind for you -- you can't afford it, not really. But you have to buy it; there's no way to get out of it. But back then the children were satisfied with a tomato and a cold biscuit; we were satisfied with a pot of pinto beans.HELFAND: Why were they on strike? What was going on then?
NEWELL: They was trying to get them to raise their wages because they wasn't
making a decent wage; they couldn't even live on what they were making.SMITH: It's hard to go out here and if -- if what they were making -- they
wanted more because they wanted to offer more to their children, be able to take 00:09:00their children -- it would've been nice to take your children to town to buy them a pair of shoes instead of letting your child walk around with a big hole in the bottom of them -- or walk to school with a hole in the bottom of the shoe with six or eight inches of snow. Back when we were kids and had snow, you had snow. You don't have it now.NEWELL: And we took off our shoes; we washed our feet the first morning in May
and left our shoes off and we didn't wear shoes no more until after September.SMITH: Daddy could bring the leather pieces home from the mill and --
NEWELL: Belts -- where the machinery run -- the machinery -- he'd bring the
belts home.SMITH: He'd bring them home; he had a --
NEWELL: Shoelace.
SMITH: Shoelace. And he would put bottoms on our shoes. He would put heels on
our shoes. OK. If he couldn't get any and we had a hole in them, then we stuck a piece of cardboard in there and we went onto school with no problems and it didn't bother us to go to school. And you didn't have to pay the prices 00:10:00for lunches at school that you're paying nowadays for children to go to school.NEWELL: Most of the time you carried your lunch.
SMITH: You either carried your lunch or you could go down there and you could
get a big bowl of soup for ten cents.HELFAND: You know it sounds really romantic in a way -- the way that you're
talking about your childhood -- and I know it was probably really good in a lot of ways and I'm not asking you to remember anything that's really painful, but the contrast to why these people are outside picketing and trying to change their life compared to what you're talking about -- that's something we're trying to understand.NEWELL: Well they were doing it to try to get the mill companies to raise their
wages so they could make a decent living.HERMAN: (inaudible) take your shoes off and go barefoot.
NEWELL: I just got finished telling her that -- first of May. (laughter)
00:11:00STONEY: That was hardship.
SMITH: Yeah but now you figure people says that we couldn't stand up for
ourself. I thought from the looks of the pictures, you could see that people are standing up for themselves. These people here that was put out here, they probably was standing up for their rights.NEWELL: The reason they were put out.
SMITH: The reason they was put out. They were standing up for something that
they believed in -- which even nowadays you'd stand up for your own rights if you had a job and they wasn't paying enough money so you could afford to do your own children and give your own children a better life -- you would do the same thing. Now I had a husband that was in the union up in [Krollers?] and probably -- I would have probably helped him out a little bit if they had to go on strike and walk the picket line. I'd have probably been there helping out myself because I don't like those things. (laughter) 00:12:00HERMAN: There's a difference between a strike now and a strike back then.
SMITH: Nowadays they're ugly strikes.
HERMAN: It wasn't violent back then.
SMITH: Back here most of these people back here was peaceful; they were peaceful
people. They were standing up for what they wanted, for what their rights was, what they needed for their families and they were peaceful people and loving people.HELFAND: And what was your family trying to do when they were standing on the
porch like that? The two of you are in that picture saying something. What are you saying?SMITH: We're saying that we're standing up for what we want and we're
happy with what we got. We're happy with what little bit we've got. We didn't have a whole lot.NEWELL: But we did have -- sometimes it wasn't nothing but biscuits and fat
back meat.SMITH: Or the pot of beans --
NEWELL: Gravy -- take the grease off the gravy to make thick gravy.
SMITH: We make a statement; all these people are making a statement. We're
fighting for what we believe in. 00:13:00HELFAND: Now this picture your family is in was taken the same time that those
pictures were taken.SMITH: These here.
HELFAND: Right.
SMITH: All the unions was on strike at the time.
NEWELL: All of the south they were striking.
SMITH: They were fighting for what they believed in and what was right. And
you've got some of these towns that you probably had a lot more ruckus in than what we did here. But it's whether those -- those families -- wanted to pull together or not -- and maybe you had some that was with the union and some that wasn't -- didn't belong to the union and didn't like it because it was on strike and they couldn't work either. Because maybe what part they were doing and those other people out on strike, they couldn't keep the machinery going. So you've got to know these guys loom fixers and things like that -- if the loom can't break down, he can't fix it can he? So he don't have any job. 00:14:00So naturally you're going to have people in different areas.HELFAND: So they're all standing up for what they believe in and I'm trying
to understand what did your daddy believe in. Why are you standing there? Is it because things are so good? Why would your father have that picture made if things were so good?SMITH: Because my daddy was a proud man. My daddy wasn't a taker; my daddy
was a giver. He'd give. He didn't take from nobody, but he fought for hisself and what he thought was right for us as his children and given us the main thing -- love. We might not have had much with food; we might not have had much with clothes but we did have love from both of them and they were always there for us and every one of these people in these pictures -- I guarantee you if you set them down, they'll tell you the same thing. We didn't have much to eat, we don't have much clothes, but we did have one thing, we had love and there ain't nothing that can take that place. No amount of money could take 00:15:00that, and I wouldn't trade this for everything you've got today. That right there; if I could go back at my age now, like this, that's where I'd be. That's exactly where I'd be because I wouldn't trade my growing up life for all of this life you've got here. These fancy things don't bother me; I don't care about your washing machines and dryers and things like that; that's no big deal. But ask her where I put my clothes.NEWELL: She still hangs hers out on the line.
SMITH: I don't care how cold it is; mine goes on the line. You get out -- you
push the grass; you don't have to ride the lawn mower to cut the grass. Now I've got a riding lawn mower; I do my fill with it. But I'd rather have a push mower and our push mower was a click-click mower; it didn't have the gas 00:16:00mower. You went over and click, click, click.HELFAND: Why is it? I'm asking. We've been talking to people -- George
chime in -- we've been talking to people all over the south about these pictures and about this period of time and it's like a big secret. People standing up for their rights is a big secret and you didn't even know that your uncle -- did you -- tell me again -- tell me the full sentence -- you didn't know about Uncle Howard Payne?NEWELL: I did not know that he was President of the United Workers Association.
HELFAND: It was a textile union.
SMITH: But as many times as I went after he retired from the police force and
moved back to Charlotte because he had went to Florida to live -- and me and him and Aunt Dolly was sitting and talking about like when uncle -- grandpa -- lived down [Logee?] Street with the young men -- momma and daddy on Lees Avenue and 00:17:00the mill workers -- he never mentioned it even now and Howard ain't been dead two years, right?NEWELL: Mm-hmm.
SMITH: It's been two years now. And he didn't talk about it now. And he
was a very, very private person. That man was private for -- until he died. Am I right?NEWELL: Yup.
HERMAN: They were working people to death for starvation wages; that's why
they struck.HELFAND: What did he say?
SMITH: He said when they worked you to death for starvation wages; that's what
your cotton mills did. They hired you for less salary than anyplace else would've hired you.NEWELL: My daddy went to work in the mill when he was nine years old and I think
00:18:00he was making like a dollar a day.HERMAN: I doubt it because I went to work in 1936 for a dollar a day.
NEWELL: But he weighed -- he was so little he had to stand up on the bottom of
the things he was -- what was he doing -- working in the spinning room -- putting up bobbins on these things -- and he had to stand up on the bottom thing to reach it to put the bobbins on.SMITH: And the people of today -- if the people of the day has never worked in a
cotton mill or never been inside of a cotton mill --HELFAND: You know what? You're going to have to do me a favor.
SMITH: What?
HELFAND: I like what you're saying so much, I want you to say it in focus.
You were saying if the people of today --SMITH: I said if the people of today here in 1992 -- if they had to work in a
00:19:00cotton mill today -- they wouldn't do it. Everybody says, "I've got a hard job; I work hard." They don't work half as hard as these people did back in 1930s and '40s in the cotton mills.HERMAN: Them striking is what has people now making a decent wage.
SMITH: That's right. Because it's the same thing that they're trying to
do now when they're trying to strike; they're only trying to get what -- like you need an increase for food and house and you still got people out there now that can't have it. You can look at the people today; you feel sorry for those people today then you would've felt sorry for us back in these days when we was children and when we were growing up because the people of the day has it harder because they don't raise gardens that much no more. There's nobody 00:20:00out there to give you a jug of milk, a bucket of milk, whatever -- or a little pat of butter. They don't make that stuff nowadays so you've got to go to a grocery store and buy it. And who can afford grocery stores? It's not easy.STONEY: Did you -- and you worked in the weave room? Could you talk about the
lint and the air and the breathing and all that?NEWELL: The humidity.
SMITH: Terrible.
NEWELL: The humidity in there was horrible. They had these little things that
sprayed air -- mist -- out through that -- because if they didn't keep it wet then the threads would break. I filled batteries where you have to take a thing of thread -- string -- put it (inaudible) so it would come out to go into the shuttle and weave back and forth to make the cloth. Lint -- it was so thick in 00:21:00there you could hardly see.SMITH: Do you not have shuttle lamps? You don't have the shuttle lamps?
Where's your shuttle cabinet lamp?NEWELL: Home.
STONEY: Did you ever have any trouble with breathing?
NEWELL: Not really because I went to one of the loom fixers and get them to give
me a piece of cloth and I'd take it to what they called, "the water house," it was a bathroom really -- and I'd wet it and tie it around my neck and then every once in a while I'd wipe my face off and when it would dry out a little bit I'd go back and wet it again. But I come out of there at night and I was covered with lint from my shoulders down and I wore pants to work in -- and I'd have water dripping out the bottoms of my pants legs. I mean I was 00:22:00wet from my shoulders down -- just sopping.STONEY: Some people got what they call "brown lung" (inaudible) did you have
any --NEWELL: No. I never had no trouble with mine.
STONEY: Do you recall people in the villages doing that?
NEWELL: No. I've heard of them in the coal mines, but I never heard of it in
the mill.SMITH: See he had emphysema.
NEWELL: That was from smoking.
SMITH: Well they -- (inaudible) -- smoking don't cause that. It irritates it.
A doctor will tell you it irritates it.NEWELL: It causes it, too.
SMITH: But you take it -- just like John Lee or anybody else that's working in
the paint booths right now -- painting cars -- they will have a lung problem because you're inhaling the fumes. Y'all inhaled the dust along with the trash that was stirred up in that cotton mill. Don't tell me that didn't 00:23:00have something to do with it.NEWELL: It could have but it didn't bother me.
SMITH: I didn't say it caused it but you figure that along with daddy's
smoking and whatever have you for the years that he smoked -- and he smoked probably from the time he was say 12, 13 years old -- and then he died at 82 so you figure he smoked. He did not give his cigarettes up, man. No. You don't give up a pack of cigarettes. But that would cause lung troubles just like [John Lenning?] would have lung troubles from painting cars. You inhale the fumes off that it's going to cause lung problems. So a lot of things might have been caused their health problems as we came along -- their health problems, not ours, theirs -- cause they seen that we had what we needed. And 00:24:00like he went to work many times and didn't even have a nickel to buy a Coke off that dope truck or dope wagon as they called it. He didn't have the money to buy a Coke and he would do without the Coke so we could have the bread. So like I said at the time when we were coming up you went down to the grocery store and you asked for .15 cents of meat or .10 cents worth of bologna or whatever have you, you've got a stack like this -- you didn't get two or three slices. Go in there and buy you one piece and it's going to cost you .10 cents just to get a slice of bologna or a slice of ham or whatever. But you went down there and you got good meats.NEWELL: We even got sausage and bacon and liverwurst and stuff -- two pounds for
a dollar -- I mean two pounds for a quarter. Many a times.HELFAND: Did you ever hear about the union again after all this --?
00:25:00SMITH: No one has ever, ever talked about it no more. Nobody has never
mentioned the union since the mills went back into their working habits and everybody went on about their business and we lived and we grew up. We was taught that we worked. We had our choice of work what we wanted to do. Most of 'em worked in the mill; most of 'em enjoyed it.HELFAND: Did they?
SMITH: Well I guess they did; they worked there instead of going out and finding
something else. There were other jobs later on in the years.NEWELL: The thing of it is that most of us that went to work in that -- we
didn't know anything else. We didn't know how to go out and get a different job.SMITH: See when I came along I decided I didn't want to do this, so I knew I
had to go out and find me a job -- get me something easier to do. (laughter) When they got off from work at 11 o'clock and you may think it's a lot but 00:26:00I've seen my daddy do it many times -- in fact I've seen Irene Belt do it too -- come out of that mill and start up the street and get home and you could take your clothes and do 'em this number and water come out of your clothes. And that wasn't just the shirt, that was the pants, the underclothes, the top shirt -- whatever you had on. It was full of water; that was hard work in that place. The job itself might not have been what you would call "hard" but when you work in a place that is like the inside of a cotton mill, that's hard work.NEWELL: Like 110 in the shade -- no shade.
SMITH: That's right. I mean these people at the mill -- we had barbeques at
the mill.HELFAND: The mill gave you barbeques?
SMITH: The mills had barbeques for everybody in that section that worked at that
00:27:00mill. My daddy was the clown, the company clown. He dressed up as the clown; he rode a moped. We went down on a Saturday you had guys down there playing country western music, religious songs, whatever. You eat all the barbeque you wanted -- the younger kids -- we run, we played, we climbed, we done everything we wanted to do --NEWELL: Had dances.
SMITH: Then we got old enough to say that we were looking for guys. This was
after the strike.STONEY: Was that just on the 4th of July or was it every Saturday or what?
SMITH: No it was once a year barbeque that they had. It was for the whole mill
village as they called it -- which you had [Pigrim?] Street, Louise Avenue, Parkwood Avenue, Parsons Street -- all of that was considered Louise Mill Village and we all could go out there.STONEY: And some places like say East Newnan, Georgia, for example, the
superintendent of the mill was also the superintendent of the Sunday school and 00:28:00if you didn't go to church he got after you. Was there anything like that at your mill?SMITH: No. I never heard of them down at the mill -- Mr. Knight and what was --?
NEWELL: George.
SMITH: What was his name? The one that lived right straight across in front of
the mill -- in the mill house -- now they had the good houses. They had the big houses. We had the holy houses. (laughter) But that didn't bother none of us. That was -- see that was the catch even your boss man -- the big overseers and all of that -- they lived right across the street from the mill -- and they had the huge big houses. They had better than we did -- their kids dressed better than we did -- and that was only -- their house was here and our houses started here and went up the street. But there was no squabble about it. The 00:29:00only thing they wanted was the boss man to give them their raises and you don't blame the men when they asked for a raise. Ain't nobody going to work for no dollar an hour, 25 cents an hour -- all their lives.HELFAND: Did they want something else other than money?
SMITH: No they wanted the money; that's what they wanted.
HELFAND: Now you were two years old at the time, right?
SMITH: I was almost three years old.
HELFAND: Now Ruby, you were 16. And you were working there at the time; it was
eight hours a day, right?NEWELL: Back then we was working ten hours a day.
HELFAND: At the time of the strike I think it was eight hours. Do you remember
when it went from ten-and-a-half to eight?NEWELL: It was after I went to work there that they went to eight.
00:30:00HELFAND: OK. Do you remember any -- this didn't happen all at once -- a big
uprising or anything -- this was a processed thing -- it took some time. Can you talk a little bit about the stirrings that might have started to happen around the eight hour day and then they said you could join a union and then look at what your uncle went up and did. (laughter)NEWELL: He started up the union. Um. Well, I really -- I don't remember too
much about it because I never did talk to anybody about the strike.HELFAND: Yeah, come on in, do you want to say something?
HERMAN: In 1936 --
HELFAND: Come on in, come on in.
HERMAN: In 1936 --
HELFAND: No, you've got to come on in.
HERMAN: This is not about the mill. I want to talk about -- in 1936 when
Roosevelt --STONEY: That's exactly why we want you to come in because we want to hear
about Roosevelt --HERMAN: He passed the National Recovery Act --
HELFAND: No, no, why don't you come on in? You can't talk from that chair
in there because we can't see you. 00:31:00NEWELL: She wants to look at you, Herman.
SMITH: Now what did you tell me this evening -- you wanted someone to look at
ya? Now look. Talk now.HERMAN: Well talking about the mill going on eight hours -- in about 1936
Roosevelt passed the National Recovery Act and you couldn't work but eight hours a day -- any time over eight hours was overtime -- so that's when the mills started paying pretty decent salaries as a way out --NEWELL: That was after the strike.
HERMAN: Yeah, that was way after the strike was over. That's when they worked
eight hours, I think. But I think the strikes and all is what caused the President to make that ruling that they couldn't work 'em but eight hours and any time over that they had to pay them overtime.HELFAND: Well --
SMITH: You're what -- how old are you?
STONEY: I'm 75.
SMITH: OK. You're 75. Can you not remember back when you was young? Your
00:32:00parents didn't discuss their work or their business to you, did they?STONEY: We had -- I had every worry that my father had came right across that
dinner table. (laughter)NEWELL: That wasn't the way at our house.
SMITH: No. We went to the table to eat, we eat. If my dad got up and walked
outside and you got into a fight in that kitchen with one of the other ones -- back in that back door he'd come but when he come back, he came back with his stick. His leather strop or his hickory.NEWELL: When he was at the table he was all the time going on some kind of
foolishness just like the first time my husband ever ate dinner with us -- we were eating and daddy got finished and he got up and turned around and my husband said, "Don't do like he did the last time and go up and tell everybody you didn't get half enough to eat." (laughter) That's the first time he had ever been there. 00:33:00SMITH: I will all but guarantee to say that some of these people in some of
places -- maybe over in Georgia, maybe in Gastonia -- that had the hard times in the vicinity or the mill area that they were living in. Like I said all mills wasn't alike.STONEY: Wasn't alike, sure. That's true.
SMITH: My dad went -- because he was also a tie-in fixer so he could go fix a
tie-in machine if it broke so he would go to Hoskins --STONEY: So he travelled around?
SMITH: Whichever one. If he finished his job and they called him in the middle
of the night and they needed that fixed, my daddy got up out of bed and went to it.NEWELL: He'd been gone for the weekend.
SMITH: Where we were raised up at -- you didn't stay up until 12 and 1 and 2
o'clock in the morning. The children were in the house in the bed. You didn't get out and [rape?] the streets. Now some of these other towns and 00:34:00from what I heard and looking at this and hearing the name -- [Clodinger?] the lady met over at nursing home was over there she had a stroke and she was from Gastonia and she married a Clodinger -- and she was talking one day about the mills over there because she worked in a cotton mill and like I said she died -- she's been dead two years, too. And she was talking about the hard times she had, you know, with hers -- she had three children, blah, blah, blah -- but like I said maybe these other mills had a harder time; maybe the people didn't --STONEY: Mills weren't equal --
SMITH: Well -- and too maybe the people in those areas didn't pull together
and like we were trying to say the people on Louise Avenue in the Belmont section -- they pulled together. They were there to help each other. 00:35:00HELFAND: Is that why -- is that why they were all so well organized? This is
the only photograph I've seen with your uncle sitting in the mill.SMITH: Where's it at?
HELFAND: That one. That's the only one that I've ever seen where they're
all together in a house, in the mill village, talking about -- you know -- as a union, talking about this strike.SMITH: Probably one of the others houses because this doesn't look like one
that I remember seeing the inside of here. So this could've been --HERMAN: (inaudible) down at the corner somewhere.
SMITH: Probably. Probably. Or maybe in the back of the beer joint, which
would've been logical.HELFAND: So when you look at these pictures and you see your uncle in there like
that and you see -- and you knew all of those men, right --?SMITH: Most of them.
HELFAND: What do you think?
NEWELL: Most of them I worked with.
00:36:00SMITH: Well I've always highly admired all of them, this one here that I know.
The McCoys, the Wilsons, naturally my grandfather.NEWELL: In fact the Wilson guy lived two doors down from us.
SMITH: Two doors down from the house. These are people that we admired as
children growing up. We played with their children; we went in their houses, they watched after us if we was in their yard. Daddy did the same thing if they was in our yard.NEWELL: All of them were treated alike. If they were at your house, and they
did something they didn't have no business -- your daddy would jump on them the same as your daddy would you -- and it was the same way --SMITH: We weren't allowed to disobey the older people and that's what I'm
talking about -- these people that you've got here that was having the riots and things -- uh -- they didn't -- wasn't working together. The people 00:37:00didn't pull together.HELFAND: The reason why it looks like a riot is because they're on strike. So
they're not fighting with each other --SMITH: I'm talking about the ones that has the officers and things --
NEWELL: The guards, the National Guards.
SMITH: The guards and things in there to hold down and keep peace in these areas
-- that's what you had to say.HELFAND: Well actually they were brought in -- those machine -- the guards were
brought in by the governors to try to keep --SMITH: To keep peace --
HELFAND: -- peace.
SMITH: Peace in those areas, but that's what I'm talking about. I never
seen any of that in our section.HELFAND: But one of the questions --
STONEY: Do you remember the National Guard coming to the mills?
NEWELL: Not in Charlotte. Not Louise.
HELFAND: What happened when the strike was over and everyone had to go back to work?
NEWELL: They all went back to work -- just like anything hadn't happened.
SMITH: See that's what you --
00:38:00HELFAND: And your daddy got his job back, no problem?
NEWELL: Oh, yeah. As far as I know, there was nobody fired after that strike
was over -- nobody.SMITH: I don't either. I think it's the pitiful sight there putting those
poor people out of the house myself.STONEY: Do we have any record of (inaudible)?
NEWELL: No.
SMITH: That -- you know -- that's what I can't understand is people that was
-- you put 'em out of the house and we never would've went through with any of this. Like I said hard times, but still --STONEY: This didn't happen here.
SMITH: It didn't happen here.
STONEY: OK. I think --
HELFAND: One last time -- hold up that picture of your family. Yeah, the good one.
NEWELL: This one?
HELFAND: Yeah, between the two of you.
STONEY: Let me get a good still of that; that would be great, yeah. I can send
00:39:00you a copy of this.NEWELL: Well good.
STONEY: As they always say, "one more." What's your depth of field, Judy?
You got any?SMITH: She's over there playing around.
HELFAND: I'm over here playing around, trying to focus.
STONEY: OK. Could you tilt the picture a little -- oh yes, that's it.
HELFAND: Did you hit the red button?
STONEY: I did. Now could you go over and tell us who these people are?
SMITH: Who, Ruby?
NEWELL: No, you do that.
HELFAND: Let's start with saying, "We're good looking kids."
SMITH: Oh, we're beautiful children.
STONEY: OK. Start with your father.
HELFAND: Don't talk in the third person -- say "my daddy," or "me."
SMITH: (laughter) OK. This is my dad. This is my oldest sister; this is my
00:40:00mother; this is my twin brothers, Amos and Andy; this is my sister, Dorothy; this is Bob, RD; and this is Earl; and this is me. Is that what you wanted? (laughter) This is me.HELFAND: And what is your daddy and your momma -- what did they tell you to say?
What were you saying with your eyes when you were making this picture?NEWELL: They didn't tell us to say anything.
HELFAND: You know what I mean?
SMITH: You've got to know these belt people -- that's show off -- ain't
nobody tell 'em nothing. They like having their pictures made -- except for Ruby. As you notice she has a frown on her face.STONEY: Look at --
SMITH: Probably you couldn't find what you wanted that day.
00:41:00NEWELL: Probably. Probably not.
STONEY: I've got it quite covered, well covered.
HELFAND: Great. I'm just, you know. I'm just -- still -- when I tell
people that we found the people in this photograph and what you were trying to do --STONEY: They get so excited.
HELFAND: They do. They get so excited -- particularly because the photograph
had a mission and -- oops --SMITH: To me the mission would be that we're doing fine.
HELFAND: Can you say that -- but you're not doing fine -- there's a strike
on. You're two years old, you're a little kid. Come on, Ruby, why are you making that picture? What was the mission of that photograph? Don't sugarcoat it.NEWELL: I didn't really know because I had just walked in and they said,
"Get up here and we're going to make your picture," and that's it.STONEY: I think that's exactly the way it happened.
SMITH: That's true. But from --
NEWELL: He snapped about three pictures and that was it.
00:42:00SMITH: When momma was telling about the man tearing Earl's and them pants --
the idea was to make the people up north make it look worse than what it was -- that's what you're showing because I remember now she said -- he said, "We're going to tear these pants so it will really look bad," so he tore the pants to make it look worse than what we were having. The pants was tore to begin with -- wouldn't that have been logical enough? So to make it look worse than what it was and that's why I said -- these other people in these other places that was getting throwed out -- they were having it worse than we was because we were pulling together and you had other people that probably had others in their vicinity that didn't pull together. So you got your point -- 00:43:00there's your point.HERMAN: Some people were starving to death and didn't even know it. (laughter)
NEWELL: Like I tell everyone --
HELFAND: Did you daddy always wear a suit? He's so well dressed there. He
looks wonderful.SMITH: No.
NEWELL: He had been somewhere that day and when he came in -- I don't remember
where he had been -- but he had been somewhere and he come back in and hadn't had a chance to undress because he usually wore jeans and a shirt.HELFAND: Did the picture ever get up north?
NEWELL: Oh yeah, it was in the paper up there.
SMITH: You live up there, why don't you --
HELFAND: I've been looking for it.
STONEY: We haven't been able to find it.
HELFAND: I haven't been able to find it yet.
STONEY: We've looked and looked and looked.
HELFAND: But you say it did get up north.
NEWELL: Yeah, yeah.
SMITH: That was supposed to have suddenly been the copy that I've got was made
out of -- out of the one that was in the paper.STONEY: Have you seen her picture?
HELFAND: You know we haven't seen her picture.
SMITH: She hasn't seen mine. Mine is on a piece of cardboard.
00:44:00HELFAND: We're going to go to your brother's tomorrow, so maybe we could
just --SMITH: Earl's?
HELFAND: Yeah. Maybe we could swing by and you could show us the copy you have.
Would that be OK -- in the morning?SMITH: Not in the morning. I won't be home in the morning.
HELFAND: What time will you be home?
SMITH: At lunch time when I finish my husband's lunch and my son's lunch.
HELFAND: OK. Like 12?
SMITH: Well I have their lunch -- well the one gets there about 12:15 or 12:20.
STONEY: I think we better fold up. We've kept these people up too --
HELFAND: I didn't mean to upset you. Did I upset you?
NEWELL: No.
HELFAND: OK.
STONEY: I've got some beautiful pictures of the two of you.
NEWELL: Good.
STONEY: Great color with this red shirt.
SMITH: You look good with that red shirt; I look good in my blue grey. (laughter)
STONEY: By the way that made a big difference because the contrast -- the white
-- it just glares. I really appreciate it. 00:45:00SMITH: If I had known that I would wear my bad shirt. (laughter)
STONEY: You know one other thing that she wants you to cover up your Dixie. (laughter)
SMITH: You didn't like my Dixie? (laughter)
HELFAND: I think your Dixie is fine.
SMITH: You should be ashamed of yourself.
HELFAND: No. No. I would never cover up your Dixie. I'm here aren't I?
Really. That photograph is -- I feel like you're sending everybody a message.