Laura Beard Interview 2

00:00:00

Q: OK, that's good for me.

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JUDITH HELFAND: They could never be organized. And why do you say that?

LAURA BEARD: Well, I'll tell you what, we weren't as stupid as they thought we were, and we proved that by doing what we thought was right, and it turned out pretty good, don't you think so? We worked for ourselves, and as the children that are coming up from our days that they'll have a better day. And if you think the South is stupid, try us again. (laughs) So we may be stupid, but we stayed in there.

HELFAND: And now another thing that, uh, people -- I've been tell-- you know, and I told you, and I said -- and I've said to them, "Well, how could they be so stupid? They worked so hard. They wrote letters, they organized, and you 00:01:00told me, you said, 'We did it on our feet.'" Right? That's what you started telling me. Well, started telling me that again and I had stopped you before so we could -- so that I'd save you, so spill it out, Laura. How hard did you all work?

BEARD: Beg pardon?

HELFAND: How hard did you all work?

BEARD: Well, we wore out our shoes and worked on the bottom of our feet 'til they got blistered. Then we put some paper in the bottom of our shoes and kept walking, and everywhere we went, that's what we preached. Unionize, be a, uh, one of the bunch. And we didn't stop. After funny stuff, seven years, we still stuck it out. And we, what there's left, are still at it. And if we're stupid, I'm glad I'm stupid.

HELFAND: And I didn't say you were stupid, I'm just saying that that's --

BEARD: I know. I didn't say you. I said if they said we're stupid (laughs) 00:02:00I'll still always be stupid. And these people who don't stand up for their right -- they few -- then be called stupid, but it, uh -- last you get results.

HELFAND: Well, Laura, how come people don't know that all these Southern textile workers were able to organize like this?

BEARD: Well, I think some of the people thought this one -- only one's educated and the only ones knew what to do, because it, uh, when they told you or you had to do something and they put you on starvation, you learn to do it and just keep it up. But after you get so hungry, you get hungry. When you get hungry enough and your baby starts crying, you fight back. So that's what we did. And we're still fighting for the kids.

00:03:00

HELFAND: Now, before you told me that you all knew that Alabama came out much earlier than the general textile strike. Everyone else came out to September in 1934. You all came out in July.

BEARD: Mm-hmm.

HELFAND: So Alabama was leading the bunch.

BEARD: I never knew that. Well, they helped us a lot.

HELFAND: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Tell us about that.

BEARD: Well, we got messages from them undercover how to do it and what to do.

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry. Start over -- you got messages from who?

BEARD: From the ones that was already --

HELFAND: Yeah, talk to me, Laura. I don't understand why Alabama started striking earlier than everybody else, and why you were so well organized that you could do that. So explain that to me.

BEARD: Well, we wasn't, like, the well organized, and they helped us to be -- to see and show us that we could do it if we wanted to. So, uh, they were a lot of help to us, because they were ahead of us and they understood it better.

HELFAND: Who's they? I don't know who you're talking about.

00:04:00

BEARD: You said the one that organized ahead.

HELFAND: Oh no, OK, what I was saying was that Alabama started -- came out for this national strike, that they started this -- that they led the nation -- the national textile strike -- they started earlier than everybody else. So I'm trying to understand why in Alabama?

BEARD: Well, now -- uh, well now, and do you have, uh -- did they get a contract?

GEORGE STONEY: The Northerners had the contract. She -- try -- the Northerners had the contract beforehand. And so --

BEARD: Well, see the Northerner -- the Northerners was what we was fighting against, because, uh, they were -- up there, they were already a union and they was, uh, uh, keeping this down here to keep it as low as possible and they made their profits off a what wasn't unionized, because they didn't have to pay 'em anything much. And actually, if they could, uh, take the material up 00:05:00there and sell it for a big price, we'd get -- we'd make it for maybe, uh, they had cost 'em a penny a yard to get it up there and get a dollar a yard, why not? We decided that too. If they could do it, we could. Well, we got a little bit smarter, but not smart enough yet. We're still working on it.

HELFAND: Now you told me that you went into the mill in -- in, uh, 1929. You started to tell me the day you went in, and how much money you drew on your first check, and what your job was, so please start from that and tell me.

00:06:00

BEARD: Well, I -- I -- I went in there, it was six o'clock. And, uh, I don't remember the exact number -- uh, date, but it was the last Monday in October of '29, and I worked 12 hours, with a hea-- uh, experience. The next evening they put me on job by myself for piecework. So, uh, I worked all the whole 12 hours and that was the last shift on that payday. When I got my little bag -- like that little sack of paper envelope -- it was 48 cents. Forty-eight whole cents! A whole payday for 12 hours. I think I framed that ticket somewhere; it may still be here. But all the time until we got that contract and I went back to work in '40 -- uh, last day in November of '41, we -- 00:07:00there wasn't a -- a laborer, I don't think, in that mill that drew more than $9 for 60 hours, and under. And if you got to where that you could work that piecework, and got, uh, advantage of it enough that you might get a few pennies more, if you only wait out a little more, but they usually didn't wait out.

HELFAND: One more question. Tell me about the day -- do you remember the day that you signed your union card and you decided to join up?

BEARD: No, I don't think so.

HELFAND: OK.

BEARD: First time that first contractor come into town, it (inaudible) of it -- you know, the first contractor that ran out on us.

HELFAND: OK.

00:08:00

BEARD: Everybody could get a hold of a dollar gave it to him and signed. I don't know somewhere here I may still have that little ticket. Might be in an old billfold stuck down here somewhere. They give you a little card, you know, when you sign.

HELFAND: Laura, how -- when -- when the strike was over and everybody else went back to work, can you describe to me what you did --

BEARD: Well, we went -- we went back to work, uh -- we -- everybody went back to work when, uh, when the strike was over. We went on back on -- we went back on our job, but, uh, right shortly then, uh, when they got it set up and, uh, picked out at the ones that, uh, they wanted to get rid of that didn't sign that paper form, well see, when they done that they gradually just, uh, lead 'em off, and discard 'em, and replaced 'em with farmers out in the country. They went out there and set up a office out there in the woods, and 00:09:00hired farmers, and put 'em in there on our jobs. That's why some of 'em's living down street from me now. Mm-hmm. They worked there seven years.

HELFAND: Now, I'll tell you something. Um, I want you to -- you tell me that story again, but a little shorter, but when you tell me, what I don't understand -- I understand, but the person sitting behind me, who you can't see, who's the audience, they don't understand that it's the union person that they were trying to say never join a union again, and that's -- and then you could stay here and work. So could you be specific about that paper and about the people that they were trying to get rid of, 'cause...

BEARD: Well, uh, see, uh, they got the -- the, well, people -- uh, all the peoples' names, you know, uh, you know, that they could and they went around to all those with, uh, a letter that if we would, uh, sign that letter, that we 00:10:00would never mention the word union ever again in the plant if they could work. And all of we who did not sign it are the ones that didn't have a job. But we got more out of those that did sign it, and stayed in there, 'cause we got all the information from them, 'cause they was stupid enough to do that. They would be cheap enough to tell us what's going on. (laughs) So therefore they lost out after all in a way, because, uh, we could have been -- been just as well working in there, because we got more information of the inside of those that did work, because we didn't know what was going on in the inside.

HELFAND: So did the union stick together those seven years? Did -- what happened to the organization?

BEARD: Oh, sure. We kept right on organizing. We went and got a new organizer, and went right on, and, uh, and worked through that, and that's where we got 00:11:00this other contract, uh, in, uh, '41. We got a new organizer and, uh, one that stuck with us. And, uh, that's when, uh, that's when they caught up with 'em and, uh, they had to -- they had put all the people that they had laid off and, uh, put 'em back to work or lose everything they had. And then in -- when they got 'em all, uh, located and, uh, ready to go back on their job, well, uh, they signed a contract in '42.

HELFAND: Do you remember walking back through those gates after having been away seven years? Tell me about that.

BEARD: Well, uh, felt pretty good.

HELFAND: Tell me in a whole sentence. Start with --

BEARD: Well, I don't think (laughs) I could do that, it'd take too much. What I'm saying is, though, uh, maybe we, uh, maybe we felt too proud of 00:12:00ourself, but, uh, we felt like that we had tried. And, uh, and it did -- it built up and it built up, and, uh, and I'm told today it has still built up for the younger generation. Lot of us didn't get much out of it, but to people who are coming after us have a chance now to, uh, get a day's pay for a day's work, and have a living fair for their work, which they did not have then. They worked all the time and starved. And when you see your babies crying, you gonna do something about it.

GEORGE STONEY: Ask her why we don't know about all this.

HELFAND: You know, a lot of us, we don't know anything about the organizing that you did, we don't know anything about your union, we don't know 00:13:00anything about that strike. Why?

BEARD: Well, it's like this. You, yourself, can go out here and tell a child something. They can't believe you, because they didn't seen it. And you people, if we tell you all of these things, and you didn't see any of it, and you didn't film the facts of any of it, how would you trust me enough to believe it was true? You have to sign -- kinda get experience and, uh, and, uh, we kinda acquainted with this before you can understand it.

HELFAND: Well, there's a lot of textile workers, who had enough courage -- like you did, Laura -- to try and go out and organize back in 1934.

BEARD: Mm-hmm, oh yeah.

HELFAND: And 57 years later they don't talk about it. They're afraid to talk about it.

00:14:00

BEARD: I think they should talk about it. That's why -- that's what we, uh -- that's what we worked for. We didn't work for ourselves only, we worked for the future, for those that was crying now, that would have something for theirs before they cried. That's what I worked for and, uh, that's what I think that all the people who were trying to organize them days, and we're now, uh -- and being called everything, and, uh, doing without everything, to make something for tomorrow, the babies that's crying today like ours were -- it's children -- and they wouldn't cry.

HELFAND: What do you attribute -- why do you think people are afraid to speak now?

BEARD: I don't understand that. No, I don't. Because that -- you know, that is exactly, though, what's the matter with America today. They're afraid they'll, uh, get cut out of what they have. That's what I feel. 00:15:00They're afraid to do something. They're -- they're threatened. And they're afraid to do something for fear they'll lose what they have. We didn't have nothing to start with. If we, uh, run out of something again, we'll understand it, but the little ones coming up won't. And that's what's -- that's exactly what's wrong with not only, uh, this person or that person, but all the countries in the world are pretty bad that way, but I know America is. America is so afraid to do something for fear it won't work. But if you get -- if you go in the kitchen to cook a meal, and you don't put it on the stove, it won't cook, will it? OK. What's the difference in 00:16:00thinking the job and never doing it? It don't get cooked, does it?

HELFAND: They were afraid they were gonna get fired? They were afraid they were gonna get -- lose their jobs?

BEARD: Lose what they had, and we don't have anything day by day. And they were -- every time that, uh, that they think that they gonna get something done, nine times out of ten -- did you -- have you noticed, really noticed -- I don't guess you have and thought about it -- that these people, so many people today is being laid off, or, uh, ailing, or some reason to be laid off just before retirement time to be cut out of retirement? See, we got retirement -- or we got all of those things, where now that's what we living off of. They tell you, well, we, uh -- we got that contract and it took out so much on our retirement that's what I'm living on today, which if we hadn't have had 00:17:00that, we wouldn't have had one dime of anything while we sitting here today. And, uh, if they don't, uh -- if you don't take a chance. If you don't do something you can think it for the rest of your life and it won't get done.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, thank you. That's beautiful.

BEARD: That's just the way I feel. I'm just one --

GEORGE STONEY: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

HELFAND: Oh, beautiful.

BEARD: I'm just one in the world.

HELFAND: What?

BEARD: I said that's the way I feel. I'm just one in the world.

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, that's lovely.

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HELFAND: (inaudible) was not wanting to be discharged, but she was local 1978 United Textile Workers of America (inaudible) She's typical of many 00:18:00discriminations by the (inaudible) against employees with (inaudible) and in violation of Section 7A, because of the (inaudible) you could get (inaudible) these workers have the right to (inaudible) This, however, was after every effort (inaudible) Alabama state cotton textile labor relations board (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)

00:19:00

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)

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GEORGE STONEY: -- like that.

BEARD: What do you -- what do you want me to do now? Tell you to get out from (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: No, no, you just -- just have you there, looking out as though you're waiting for the mailman.

BEARD: Well, I usually do, because of payday.

00:20:00

GEORGE STONEY: OK, and then go back in. Just (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

JAMIE STONEY: Mm-hmm. Go ahead, do it again.