Leroy McCoy, Ethel Barber, Lucy Callahan, and Joyce Brookshire Interviews

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible).

ETHEL BARBER: (inaudible). And they had me to come right on out there, and uh, take the examination, which I done took for school down here at this clinic, I went to night school down there for about two years. And I knowed all about how to work in a hospital, and they carried me in there, and I signed up, and they wanted me to go to work that Friday, I couldn't because they had just sent me out of the mill. I had to clean my house up, and do my laundry. So I told her, I said, I'll come on Monday morning, and so they sent me over to the shop, and -- and just fitted me with uniforms, and I went to work at Georgia Baptist Hospital, and worked 50 years right there.

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

BARBER: I retired from Georgia Baptist.

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry, could you talk about your sisters in the mill, and how you worked?

BARBER: Well, the only thing, we cheated them, because we let her go and work before she was old enough to go to work. (laughter) Because she was so desperate to go to work, she wanted to go, and we changed her birthday to uh, May, in December, we put her up to May. They let her go to work, and so she went in the spool room, I mean spinning room, marking (inaudible). And I was in the spool room spooling. And we was -- well, we had another sister that worked part-time, she didn't work all the time. But me and Lucy worked regular, all the time. Every day.

LEROY MCCOY: They didn't -- they didn't do a lot of rewinding for me. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) machine.

BARBER: Yeah. A long time we (inaudible) I sure did. And when we got tired of that, Leroy, I went back to the weave shop and you got mad because I transferred over to the weave shop. You told Mr. Florence, "I need her," he said, 00:02:00"Well Leroy, you can get you another one." (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: How did you handle children when you were working in the mill?

BARBER: Well, mine wasn't no trouble, my little mama was living, and my little mama took care of my children when they would come home from school. My older boys would get the youngest one cleaned up and ready, and they'd do part of the housework before they went to school, and then they'd take him to school, and when they got out of school, they brought him home and kept him at the house until I got home from work. My older boys took care of that youngest boy, which my daughter was away, she was away in boarding school, because I couldn't send her to private school here, because she was what you might say deaf and dumb. She wasn't dumb, but she couldn't hear, couldn't -- and just had one eye, and I sent her off to [Cade?] Springs, to uh, boarding school, and she stayed 00:03:00there until she graduated. And the boys, I kept the boys at home.

MCCOY: You had a good mother.

BARBER: Yes, I -- I would say that.

MCCOY: Because Carol Ann told me one time, she says uh, I had -- my second son take dysentery, and uh, I had two doctors with him, and neither one of them could cure him, could do anything for him. I told your mother about it, coming by one day, and she says, "I'll tell you what you do." She says, "You go get you some lime water, some Karo syrup, and some buttermilk and says mix it up like I tell you, and says, your boy get all right." Well Dr. Houser told me that evening, he said, "I don't know what else to do for him." So I went and got that stuff, the second day my baby was up playing, just having a big time. And I told Miss Callahan, she said, "Well I'll tell you what, 00:04:00we're even now." I said, "What do you mean, even?" He said, "Well you saved my son, and I saved yours." And I said, "Well, I appreciate it." She said, "I do too." And uh, like I say, your mother was a good woman.

BARBER: She really, really belived anybody if she could.

MCCOY: That's right.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about how the women handled nursing when they were in the mills?

BARBER: No. We had a nursery out on the -- right at the end of the clinic. And all of our children, Miss Ashmore, and then Miss Rivers, took care of them children. They fed them, they took care of them, and seen that they was uh, had plenty to eat and all. And we just had to leave the mill and come down there. But mine never did stay out there. I -- my mother took care of my children. She kept all them children, even if they was boys, if they didn't do what she 00:05:00told them to, she spanked them. And they know they had to mind their grandmother. And I was so thankful that she made them mind, because I didn't want my young ones to be rowdy.

LUCY CALLAHAN: (inaudible) turn over.

BARBER: She's about snow us from here. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Yes, I'm really proud of my mama, she was a good old soul.

GEORGE STONEY: Well now, did (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) the women, what did they do when they had to nurse their babies?

MCCOY: Fill up a little bottle.

BARBER: That's right, you -- yeah, they put them on the bottle.

MCCOY: My wife did that.

BARBER: Absolutely. They -- they didn't come off of the job, come home to nurse that young'un, they put it on a bottle.

GEORGE STONEY: Your wife worked in the mill then?

MCCOY: Yeah, my wife worked in the spooling room for years.

BARBER: Lord help yes.

MCCOY: She was in the spooling room working whenever I married her.

BARBER: That's right. She certainly was.

MCCOY: Nineteen thirty-six.

BARBER: (inaudible) right up there, and I was working 3:00 to 11:00 (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

MCCOY: I paid the first week that Social Security started.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about Gene Talmadge?

MCCOY: Oh Lord.

BARBER: Heavens to be. (laughter) What -- why bring that up? Why? Why? That man, that man. Gene Talmadge. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Well I seen him many times, I seen Gene Talmadge many times. But, it's for knowing anything in the world about Gene Talmadge I don't know. I don't know a thing. I sure don't. But, evidently he was a good man.

MCCOY: I seen him ride his bicycle by.

BARBER: Yeah.

MCCOY: At the football games. (laughter)

BARBER: Yes he -- he liked crowds, Gene liked getting crowds, wasn't no question of that. And he'd be just out talking, Gene Talmadge could out-talk any of them.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you think he was for the textile workers?

BARBER: Yes, yes I do, I really do. I believe he was. I sure do believe Gene Talmadge was for the majority of the textile people. Although he wouldn't work in the mill, he wouldn't work in the mill -- you couldn't have drug him in that mill. But, he did love to be around where the textile people was. And he loved (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

CALLAHAN: (inaudible) vote for him for governor.

BARBER: Yeah, he -- he loved to have a big crowd to talk to. He loved that. But, as far as doing anything about (inaudible) where he come from, anything 00:08:00like that, I don't know. But we had a good life on the farm, when I was a child. I loved it, we really had a good life.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you go back to the country much afterwards?

BARBER: Yes, heavens yes. To this day, we still go back to the old home place in Forsyth County. We lived there until 1919, and we come here to Atlanta. Well I'll tell you, we raised a crop that year. I mean, we really had a crop, and had all kind of chickens and hogs, and my daddy come down here when he laid by the crop, and went to work. And when time come to gather all that stuff --

CALLAHAN: (inaudible)

BARBER: -- to gather all that, us children gathered it, and our mother, and when 00:09:00time come to kill that hog, he come home and did that. And he sold the cow, and we uh, cooked up all the chickens, and we loaded all of our stuff and come to Atlanta, and lived right across there at 601 in 1919, in the fall of the year.

GEORGE STONEY: Now did you have a garden and chickens (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)?

BARBER: Yes we did, yes we had, we had raised all -- mother had done put up all the garden, she put up all the beans, the taters, everything. She canned everything she could can.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, did you have a place in the mill village, in Cabbagetown, for a garden?

BARBER: No. No, no, no. No, no, no. When we moved right over there, we didn't have nothing in that back yard but a coal bin. We was burning coal then, to heat that house. There wasn't no gas or nothing, it was all coal and wood, wasn't it Leroy?

CALLAHAN: We didn't even have no wood to burn.

BARBER: No, we didn't have no electric lights, we used lamps. Just what we had in the country.

CALLAHAN: No screen doors on the house.

BARBER: No screens on the windows, no nothing.

GEORGE STONEY: When did you get that?

BARBER: Nineteen nineteen.

GEORGE STONEY: When did you get screen doors and such?

BARBER: Oh, it was several years after that. Several years.

MCCOY: Up in the '30s.

BARBER: Yeah. And that's one thing I can say Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill done, they kept up their property. They would paint them houses inside one summer, and the next summer, they'd paint the outside. And they kept that property just as clean, they had about three men that worked out around the property, and one colored man, and he was good, I'm telling you, that colored man was the best they come in fixing the plumbing, and cleaning out around the houses, he 00:11:00was a good man.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember any colored people working in the mill with you?

BARBER: No. Not when I was in there, no. I didn't have a [sign?] of a colored person to work with. Did I, Leroy?

MCCOY: No, not way back then.

BARBER: Sure didn't. It was just a few years before the mill closed that they went to hiring colored people.

GEORGE STONEY: Like in the '60s?

BARBER: Yeah. Yes.

MCCOY: Early '60s, but again, there (inaudible). But again, they weren't going to have (inaudible) of them.

GEORGE STONEY: I was told that they had some of them working outside the mill.

BARBER: Oh yeah.

MCCOY: Oh yes. They had a yard man, (inaudible) machine shop.

BARBER: That's right. Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: Way back yonder.

BARBER: Yeah, they was in the machine shop, and around the bleachers. But not inside the mill.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, in some places I know they -- they were the ones who handled the bales, and broke them all open, and that kind of thing.

MCCOY: Yeah, that was in the picker room.

BARBER: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. So they had them in the picker room here?

MCCOY: Yeah.

BARBER: We didn't have them in the waste house then though, did we Leroy?

MCCOY: In the what?

BARBER: Waste house.

MCCOY: No.

BARBER: Where they carried all that bad cloth, and --

MCCOY: Old Man [Crags?] used to run the waste house, didn't he?

BARBER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And old [Cy Crags?], you remember --

MCCOY: I remember, yeah.

BARBER: -- you remember when that man fired Cy, and made him leave, and he went up to Douglasville and rented him a farm up there, and made a crop? And about the time that that crop was laid by, old man Jake found out that he'd run old 00:13:00Cy off, and Cy was living here on Savannah Street when they fired him and run him off. And you know, he said (inaudible) "Stokes, go up there and get him and bring him back down here."

MCCOY: Put him to work.

BARBER: And put him -- he told him, he said, "You didn't have to do nothing but sit in a chair," he said, "They better put you a soft chair in here, but you're going to stay in this warehouse as long as -- the rest of your life." And he said, "The next that runs you off," he said, "I'm going to run him off."

MCCOY: Yeah.

BARBER: He said, "You're" -- and he sent them workers that worked in that yard up there and get that man's farm crop, and sold it for him. But old man Jake made him go get him, and put him back there in that waste house. That old man enjoyed that (inaudible).

MCCOY: He said, you help me make my business.

BARBER: Yes sir, he sure did.

MCCOY: Back then (inaudible) long years.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

BARBER: He was proud of that old man, I'm telling you, to – (break in video) and I (inaudible) picture of (inaudible).

MCCOY: Yeah, this was one right here. At one time, he was the vice president of the company, this man was the vice president of the company, and this one, and they were also the big general managers. And this is (inaudible), he was the big vice president of all the money. And he answered to Allied, and Allied Product in Chicago.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, now the others, the other ones?

BARBER: Now, the Elsas is -- they (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

MCCOY: And uh --

BARBER: The ones that started (inaudible).

MCCOY: This is the founder of Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, Jacob Elsas. This is his sons, Oscar, Benjamin, and Norman, William, we always called him Bill, and 00:15:00Clarence. That was the Elsas, the six Elsas that looked after the company. And uh, like I say, they stayed in office, but these men come in the plant, this men and all, these three, they run the plant.

BARBER: And they toured the plant constantly.

MCCOY: Right.

BARBER: Every day.

MCCOY: And this was some of their office men. (inaudible) and here is, here's a lot of the machinery. This -- this is what you called the roving -- the fitting, spinning, the warp spinning, spooling, spooling and warping, and they make these [cheap cores?], and they would make section beams out here, and this is a slasher, they put [sides?] in it, and uh, this is the weave rooms, where it 00:16:00was so hot all the time.

BARBER: Yeah.

MCCOY: Over here, we have it open in the bleachery, finishing in the bleachery, screen printing, they had two of these machines that could print as much as a million yards a week.

GEORGE STONEY: Did the women wear uniforms in the factory?

MCCOY: No.

BARBER: No.

MCCOY: But they -- we had one general manager there that required no pants, a dress, and stockings.

BARBER: Yeah.

MCCOY: For the women.

BARBER: Sure did.

MCCOY: That's right.

CALLAHAN: And when the war broke out, World War II broke out, all of us spinners on the third floor wrote up a petition for privileges to wear socks.

MCCOY: That's right, to wear socks instead of stockings.

CALLAHAN: And we carried it to Mr. Rogers, and we got the privilege, and we all went to wearing socks instead of stockings. There wasn't a better man in the state of Georgia than Mr. Rogers was. And all the big bosses was afraid of him.

BARBER: (laughter) Because he was so plain and easygoing, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

MCCOY: Well he's the man that got -- that sent me to school.

BARBER: (inaudible) that book.

MCCOY: He's the man that sent me to school, Mr. Rogers was.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, could you look at her pins?

BARBER: Show him the pins, Lucy.

CALLAHAN: Well, (inaudible).

MCCOY: Give me your 40 year one first. Yeah, that's your 40 year pin. Two diamonds and a sapphire. You got one 45, haven't you, with three diamonds in it?

JAMIE STONEY: Hold on, could you hold on one second? I'm a little too close here.

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) going to have to back up just a little bit.

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah, I'm going to back up (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: No, it's -- it's -- let him do it.

JAMIE STONEY: It's easier for me to move than you.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

MCCOY: This is your one for 40 years service.

GEORGE STONEY: Is that -- we're not quite ready yet. I'll tell you when.

JAMIE STONEY: Which one's the one for 40, the one on -- with the sapphire.

MCCOY: The one with the sapphire is your 40 year service.

BARBER: (inaudible)

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

JAMIE STONEY: And uh, that's the 40 year pin.

MCCOY: This one. And this is your 45 year pin.

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) together now.

MCCOY: I know you're proud of them, Lucy.

CALLAHAN: Very, very proud of them, Leroy. Everybody that went to the parties got watches with me, that's what I got.

GEORGE STONEY: Now Lucy, could you show us the other thing you have there?

CALLAHAN: This?

MCCOY: This is your 45 year award? Sixteenth day of May, '72, mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: Pass it back to her, and -- and Lucy, I want you just to hold it up for us.

BARBER: Lucy, hold it up for them.

GEORGE STONEY: That's fine.

BARBER: Now, Lucy.

MCCOY: OK, I know you're proud of these, Lucy.

CALLAHAN: Always have been.

BARBER: Yeah, look at them and think back the years that she put in to get them. A coincidence, one day last week, Leroy, me and Richard was going around, and we was going up there, and you know, when he was born, I 00:20:00was living in the house with mother at 601, and them little houses was right straight up and down (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)Boulevard there. And --

MCCOY: Yeah. Four of them.

CALLAHAN: No, there's about six or seven of them, Leroy.

MCCOY: I thought there was four of them.

BARBER: No, there's more now, that was from this building, slapped to (inaudible). And we stopped at that stop sign, he said, "Mother, think back, I would give anything if back when them houses was there on Boulevard, if we could had got a picture of that, just made a picture of all them houses, right there on Boulevard. Said that would be the wonderfulest [sic] historical thing that could happen, if we could have got a picture, and a tidbit of all them houses there on Boulevard.

MCCOY: Floyd Johnson used to live in one of them.

BARBER: Yes sir, and I was housekeeping in --

MCCOY: (inaudible) had that dog that jumped off the house.

BARBER: And jumped off that ladder. He taught that to go up that ladder and jump off.

MCCOY: Jump off the top of the house.

BARBER: I went to keep his house in that second house there from that building, and Floyd and Irene, they lived in the next one.

MCCOY: Uh-huh.

BARBER: And back then, there was no houses on the Iswald, not a house. And the first one, it's right here on Iswald, was just sitting down there, right in the middle of that field, at that big manhole, and George Orwood lived in it, and he had a fence around it, and had it full of chickens. And there come a bad rain one day, and them chickens all nearly got drowned, because that water backed up there, you know, that sewage stopped up, and you know, back then there was --

(break in audio)

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)

JOYCE BROOKSHIRE: When the uh, mill sold the houses in 19-- in the mid-'50s, 00:22:00uh, a lot of them were bought by absentee landlords, and the houses started to go down, and they just continued to go down until uh, about two years ago, when a group of community residents got together and decided that we wanted to do something about it. And uh, a lot of the long-time residents were having to move because none of them owned the houses, they all rented, so we got together and formed Cabbagetown Revitalization and Future Trust. We got -- bought some houses from the city, and we've started to build new houses and to fix some of the old ones up. These are six of the new houses that we built up on Savannah Street. And another project that we're working on is um, is the mill itself, we're going to redevelop the mill to be a public/private partnership. So, I'll tell you a little bit of history about the neighborhood, it's called the Cabbagetown Ballad.

BROOKSHIRE: (singing) We came in 1885, to work in the new cotton mill. For we had heard the pay was good, there were many jobs to fill. We said goodbye to our mountain homes, there to return no more. But we brought with us the way of life that we had known before.

We're a mountain clan called Cabbagetown, in the city of Atlanta, GA. And if it be the will of God, it's where we'll always stay.

Sometimes the way was hard to bear, our lives were never our own. To the owner 00:24:00of a cotton mill, your soul to him belongs. But when the bad times got us down, and good times were so few, we'd sing old songs about our mountain homes, our music would see us through.

We're a mountain clan called Cabbagetown, in the city of Atlanta, GA. And if it be the will of God, it's where we'll always stay.

And now the smokestack smokes no more, no whistle blows it down. They've taken all they wanted from us, packed up their cotton and gone. And we are left 00:25:00to live our lives, in a world that's never too kind. But the strength of a mountain's in us all, and a new day we will find.

We're a mountain clan called Cabbagetown, in the city of Atlanta, GA. And if it be the will of God, it's where we'll always stay.

We're a mountain clan called Cabbagetown, in the city of Atlanta, GA. And if it be the will of God, it's where we'll always stay. (ends singing)

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, that's beautiful. (applause)

BROOKSHIRE: (inaudible)

HELFAND: (inaudible) a lot of doors.

BROOKSHIRE: Come in.

GEORGE STONEY: Joyce? We'd like to do that one more time.

BROOKSHIRE: OK. (laughter)

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

HELFAND: I shouldn't have come in yet, I'm sorry.

GEORGE STONEY: No, we just got lost here, we forgot we weren't in a studio. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) there's no light out there saying we're recording. No, it's (inaudible). Sorry.

F: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: No, (inaudible) we'll figure something out. I'm sorry, thank you.

F (inaudible) (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

HELFAND: I'll stay outside.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, all right.

HELFAND: (inaudible) OK.

BROOKSHIRE: Yeah, because the (inaudible).

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

F: Oh no, this would be you? Oh, OK, all right. Thanks a lot, OK.

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

BROOKSHIRE: -- do it on the outside.

HELFAND: Well I'll stand out here.

BROOKSHIRE: OK.

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible). (laughter)

BROOKSHIRE: Throat (inaudible). My voice is [so pretty?].

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)