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00:03:00MAN ON NEWSREEL: "The textile strikers flying squadron methods, National
Guardsmen in Newnan, Georgia round up a group of pickets and place them under arrest. Women as well as men are taken in the militia's net. The strikers submit peacefully and are hustled off before bristling bayonets. State highway trucks are used to transport the prisoners, numbering about 200, many of them women and girls. This drastic action, authorities explained, is taken to prevent threatened violence; specifically those arrested are charged with attempting to prevent the reopening of the Newnan Mills. Reminiscent of World War days the hastily constructed internment camp with which the strikers are confined. This one is in back of Fort McPherson at Atlanta. Armed guards patrolled the barbed wire enclosures surrounding the camp while the prisoners learn how it feels to be on the inside looking out. Chow time finds a lot of healthy appetites and the incarcerated ladies make the best of their 00:04:00predicament. It's good old Army grub, plain but nourishing and the state is paying for it."GEORGE STONEY: Now the rest of this is silent footage, but I'll turn it off
and cut down the sound. Now why don't you start? Talk to the others about the -- when you came to the union what you knew about the union and all of this.F1: Well I was born in 1934 and when this was going on and my parents were right
in the middle of it. Mother and Daddy were both union members. They both joined 00:05:00the union and they were both out on strike and with a small town like ours, most of my relatives also were working in the same plant and most of them were out on strike and I remember hearing my parents talk, and uncles and aunts talk, about how windows were shot out of the cars, they would light sticks of dynamite, throw in their yards, there were actually some actually tarred and feathered and there would be a lot of times, a lot of threatening letters against you and members of your family would be put in your mailbox. And they did have it rough.ANGIE ROSSNER: I didn't know a great deal about the 1934 -- as a matter of
fact I don't remember knowing anything about it -- but Mother and Daddy both, and my oldest sister were always encouraging about wanting to work in union places. They said that working people is all they got and my mother always told 00:06:00me, "If you're going to work inside a mill," -- which she didn't want me to -- she said, "If you are going to work inside a mill, make sure you try to make it a union one because if you -- "F1: That was my family. If you worked in the mill, you automatically joined the
union. If you go in the plant, you automatically joined the union.ROSSNER: She said that's all you've got working for you. It's the other
people that's there in the mill.F3: My experience was just the reverse because although I didn't know about
the '34 strike, of course, I had family that worked in the union -- or in the mills, I'm sorry -- and they were non-union plants. That's where I started and then when I started talking about going to work at Fieldcrest, which is a union mill, they said, "No, you don't want to do that because once you get a job in a mill that's union you'll never work anywhere else. You shouldn't do this." They're still feeling that way. I've got aunts that are working at Fieldcrest now that of course are union but the ones that are working 00:07:00at other plants that are saying, there again the union is responsible because this is happening to us or that's happening to us.F4: My father was in the union; he worked for Fieldcrest's -- one of the
Fieldcrest's in Salisbury. Um. He always taught us children that we should stand for what we believe in and you know, if that's what the union is. It's an organization where people are standing together for the rights, and protecting their rights, and that's something I just really believe in, but I didn't know anything about the '34 strike; I know it had to be awful, you know. It was really bad.F5: OK. I don't know anything about the 1934 strike. I wasn't born, but I
work in a plant that has been established since 1916 and I have some very, very old friends; I went there in 1966 but union -- they were -- it's anti-union. 00:08:00Those people are so anti-union and very seldom you can get them to talk about it, but I have some old friends that's around 80 years old that we talk about some things and I'm going to get some views on -- see if they can tell me something about that 1934 strike. I'm the only member of my family that's ever been into a mill, but my daddy was always pro-union and I am the same way.F6: I think the strike had more of a negative response on the members of my
family that I know that work in the mill because I know now with my union activities my parents are totally turned off from my activities. They tell me that the union, you know, is not good for you. You know I think more or less the company won out over the union with their strike, you know. They were 00:09:00talking about the bad things that the people in the union did -- you know as far as what you were talking about -- about tearing up people's cars, breaking their windows out, threatening their lives and all this kind of thing. So it held a negative response with them, you know, but it doesn't affect me, you know. I'm pro-union all the way, so...M1: I grew up on a mill hill, a village outside of the city limits of Rock Hill,
South Carolina. We were very poor people and you know it's sometimes painful to talk about. It's something I've never talked about before. We had one small mill, a company store -- I remember my grandfather would go down to the 00:10:00company store and buy food and they'd take it out of his check at the end of the week; just automatically deduct it. He was not a pro-unionist. I think he grew up in an environment where the company controlled his whole life but it sure made me union. He really did.F6: I think that's what had a lot of effect on me because my parents tell me
stories about the town that I grew up in; you know the company dictated to you who your friends were. You know each street that you lived on was supposed to be considered a different class of people. If you lived on one street, you 00:11:00didn't associate with people three streets back from you, and I can also remember my father telling me when he was a young boy that he went in the company store one time and stole some peanuts and his concern -- his family's concern -- was not what was going to happen to him for stealing the peanuts -- but my grandfather had to actually beg to keep his job because he stole those little bit of peanuts. Things like that is what's made me, you know, union all the way. I'm serious.F1: I'd like to add something to that. I think -- I know my parents were in
the union. Now where we lived was a very small village. It was mill village. I mean the company owned everything. Everything was company owned and you did what the company said because if you didn't you lost your job, you were out. 00:12:00I mean you were out in the cold literally. For those people back in those days to stand up and to strike against something like that, I mean that took courage. I mean it really took courage 'cause they were risking the chance -- well I'm going to be out of a job, how am I going to feed my kids, what are we going to do this winter -- and you think about that, that's a lot to face.F6: Even as far as where you're going to live.
F1: Absolutely. And to think -- well my parents had the courage to stand up for
this and to fight for it, even risking the chance of being put on the street with nowhere to go, or nothing to eat, or anything else, but they were willing to stand up and fight for it so I'm just automatically a union person.ROSSNER: Even nowadays the supervisors at some of the plants now -- I know this
to be true -- we had a girl that went from cutting to being a supervisor -- and she would still come in and eat lunch with us when we would take our break. And 00:13:00her foreman told her, "You don't eat with the help." Now that still goes on.F6: It does. It does in our plant.
ROSSNER: That's pathetic.
F6: I had a friend that worked in a credit union and she told me one day she
said, "The company would probably fire me from my job if they knew that the two of us were friends and we went out, you know, if we went out to clubs or whatever we did together." She said she would probably lose her job if the company knew it.F1: There's a lot of that that goes on. People don't know about it because
the company keeps it hidden but there's a lot of pressure put on you when you are clerical. You don't have union rights, you can't be in the union, but boy when you take a job like that just think what you -- they put a muzzle on you -- I mean they control what they do, where you go and what you say, and that's just too much. That is absolutely un-American.F5: When we got interested in the union at Tennessee Woolen Mills, the first
time it was defeated by 12 votes, but some months later -- it was a lady -- she 00:14:00was in her early sixties, she was too young, she couldn't draw on Social Security -- and she had no income and because they put in some new program, institutes some new programs, they put her out the door. This lady did not have anything and that's when they kind of changed some views at Tennessee Woolen Mills then. And then -- and around a year later we had another election and we won.F6: You know we've still got a long way to go, but look at how our parents and
our grandparents lived and you know the company dictated everything. You know, your electricity, your food, where you lived, I mean we've come a long way but we still have a long way to go and I look back and I think, "God how did these people do this?" You know as far as to stand up against a company that just 00:15:00owned you, you know? And they did it.F1: And they dictated the education of the children. I mean what education your
children got, that was dictated by the company. So the company literally owned you and to stand up to that in those days, that was really a big step to take.F6: I really admire them for it.
F1: You have to. You have to admire those people.
STONEY: Just a moment.
M1: Back when I was a kid, a young child, I grew up on a mill hill in South
Carolina that was literally controlled by one mill, one company. It's not something that I have talked about a lot because it brings back a lot of painful memories. We were so poor and paid so little, my grandparents raised me, that 00:16:00it's unbelievable today in this society -- a lot of people won't believe it, can't believe it -- how things really were. I went to school without shoes. I've gone hungry. My grandfather would go down to the company store and buy food and at the end of the week they would automatically deduct it from his check. Ridiculous prices that he had to pay. That kind of environment puts scars on people that they never heal. You live with those the rest of your life. 00:17:00STONEY: Does anybody want to respond to that?
ROSSNER: I know what he's talking about. I know exactly what he's talking
about because of the things that we went through and I've had people tell me that there's no way in the world that I could possibly went through. Actually I didn't think of as really going through anything at the time, but my mother was -- as I've said before -- she was literally barefoot and pregnant. We lived in a house that had no electricity and had no running water. She washed our clothes in a black wash pot in the back yard and she scrubbed them on a scrub board and she scrubbed until her knuckles bled and she let my oldest sister wear her tennis shoes to school, and during the winter the well would freeze over and we'd throw rocks down the well and sometimes we couldn't even get the water from the well and we'd have to walk out to the creek way off in the woods behind the house. So I can relate to the fact that when 00:18:00you're poor, it's hard. I think that's probably why my parents were the way they were -- feeling like the union -- that's where you went to stick together to have anything.STONEY: I wonder if any of you could talk about why it is that so much of the
history of the unionism has been kept so quiet. Why even your own folks have not talked about it.F3: It is quiet or repressed?
STONEY: OK.
F3: I feel like it's been repressed, so OK we're finding out that for a long
period of time it was illegal. OK if my grandmother was in the mills, retired from the mills, died in a mill house. She lived in what we call a shotgun house. Three rooms, living room, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, 00:19:00whatever. In discussions with her I remember talking to her -- and I'm really ashamed at myself now that I didn't -- wasn't more interested -- I remember her talking to me about doing things by hand -- tying warps by hand, walking to the company store, raising six kids in a house that big and thinking it's big. Wearing the same clothes over and over because you only owned three dresses or two dresses or whatever. Having to share a pair of shoes between the family, the children.ROSSNER: And if you were lucky you had neighbors that would give you their hand-me-downs.
F3: Yes but the point is that going through this and having to live in these
conditions and knowing that for a period of time if you're pro-union you're going to be punished so you do repress it, you do hold it back and of course -- 00:20:00even -- I would imagine even a relative -- me going to her and saying, "Granny, talk to me. What is this about a union?" her memories are so frightening of the periods that she's gone through that I'm not burdening a younger generation with the horror I went through because even the film -- we see the horror that they went through. I feel like -- like I said -- it wasn't that it's been covered up -- but all because of the horror. And of course --ROSSNER: White washed.
F3: -- the unions haven't had the strength, the ability to bring this all out.
When they were blacklisted, of course, when it was made illegal they couldn't do it except the ones that were truly faithful and I talked to you, you talk to the boss and I'm gone, you know.STONEY: Now look at the screen and see those local citizens who -- good
upstanding citizens who are deputized to protect the mills.M1: That's ridiculous.
00:21:00STONEY: Respond to that, if you would.
F2: It's a lot of fear.
M1: I feel like the company's indoctrinated not only just the villages that
they controlled and the people's lives that they controlled, but they got into politics -- the local politics -- and they controlled local politics. Today I would like to see them try to do something like that today. I would love to get involved in it.F3: I feel like right now, I see people, but I see ignorance guarding that mill.
Because if they knew what the true fight was about, if they knew what the true cause was, if they knew the true living conditions, I don't believe they would be standing there.F6: That's just like it is today. You have people who are brain washed by the
company. That's what these people -- that's what happened to these people -- they've been brainwashed by the company. Like what you said, they really 00:22:00don't know what's going on. Gosh.F3: That's frightening.
F1: And too many of them were afraid to fight it. They were afraid to put that
kind of a risk on their families, on their children. They were afraid to -- they did, a lot of them died. Really probably more than will ever be known, I mean actually. But a lot of people were afraid to bring such a risk on their own families.F3: I think making this known, making this kind of fight and struggle known,
it's -- we admire the man -- the people that's gone out there and fought. Look at the Poland -- we were all behind them, they were fighting for a cause that we believed in, but not just the union believed in, the American people believed in it. But yet when we say, "We are the American union," we 00:23:00don't get the same response because we don't have the same media coverage. They --M1: -- I don't understand that. How the whole nation can stand behind Lech
Walesa in Solidarity, but they won't stand behind us.F3: Right.
M1: That hurts.
F3: They haven't got the courage. How many times did you pick up the
newspaper and read what was happening in Poland, read the horrors that has gone around in Poland, but of course we're going to fight for the underdog; it's our history.ROSSNER: And that's something that come up in one of our classes yesterday.
F1: 'Cause we've been there and we know.
F6: It was just today.
F3: We apparently haven't been there long enough because we aren't doing it.
ROSSNER: That's something that came up in our class today and I was saying
that we need to get out in our community more and let our community know who we are, what we are, what we stand for, because if we don't educate them ain't no one else going to educate them. You know the company -- they are going to be educating them for what they want them to know --F4: That's right.
ROSSNER: -- and if we don't get out there, we don't have our Labor Day
marches and we don't have our picnics and we don't get on TV, you bet the 00:24:00company's going to be there; and they're going to be telling them what they want to hear.F1: Politics.
ROSSNER: And it's going to be the same thing we've been hearing over the years.
F1: The big money has the power.
M1: Yeah, you're right. That is probably our biggest weakness because if we
have the kind of money that the companies that we work for have, I think we could grow overnight.F5: Companies back the people that are running for presidents, our senators, so
that's where the money is. They can afford to have the publicity.M1: Yeah.
F5: We don't have it.
M1: And a lot of the companies we work for control the media. I learned that
yesterday; I didn't know that.STONEY: OK. One other thing.
(break in video)
00:25:00F1: I mean that's what you referred to, you worked in the mill, you were a net
dodger. Of course everybody always comes out of the mill all wrapped up in it, but --F3: For a lot of years the textile worker was a very low paid job therefore a
very, "My God I'm a secretary, you work in the mills?", kind of response because it was -- that was your last resort. I hate to say "last resort" because I work there and I'm proud of it but that was something that you could do unskilled because they would train ya and therefore you could go ahead and get a job to support your family and you didn't make a whole lot of money. That term was used on us; I guess it's still used, although like I said I use the term, "I'm a textile engineer" you know? I do make towels therefore I deserve that term. Uh. But the -- every time I've ever heard the term lint head it's always been in a derogatory sense.F1: Very.
M1: Very derogatory.
F1: Very insulting.
ROSSNER: I'd be ready to punch somebody's lights out. Don't call me a
lint head. 00:26:00F3: Not me. Not me, because I deserve -- I'm not going to say "deserve"
because that shows that there's a guilt and there's not a guilt -- I have worked and acquired that title for myself. They wanted to say that, well I can call them a pencil pusher if I want to be (inaudible). (laughter) Although seriously, I'm not going to lower myself to that standard.STONEY: How has this class affected your education?
M1: Oh my God, the poverty involved really in the caste system deprived
everybody sitting here of a decent education. I quit school in ninth grade. I worked until I'm 45 years old to get two years of college.ROSSNER: I also quit in the ninth but I was lucky. We started classes at the
union hall in '87 right after I became a shop steward and it always bothered 00:27:00my mother because I never graduated but finally we had some classes. I went down and took the GED and I passed in '87.M1: That's great.
ROSSNER: But most of us do. We do end up quitting and going to work.
M1: we had to. We didn't have any choice.
F3: The old lady at the plant was telling me that a lot of them started at the
plant working when they was 15 years old and that they worked seven days a week and they made blankets for World War II and that they would hold their church service on the plant ground for them, you know. They did that every Sunday; had service for them.F3: I think because of the history we've tried and you said you've tried
until you were 45 years old and you've got two years education --M1: Two years of college --
F3: Two years of college, I'm sorry. That's what I meant. But because of
the hardships, I don't know, I'm more at a positive side because I feel like because I've gone through the things I've gone through I'm going to push 00:28:00and I'm going to do more than what I would've done had I not had that experience to fall back on because my family is not going to go through what I went through. My family is never going to suffer the problems and degradations that my family has had to do now. My children will not have to do that; they're going to have better; they're going to have more if I can humanly possibly give it to them. And it's all because -- of course although we say I am me, but it all actually -- if you go back to it -- all because of what happened when you were younger -- the experiences that you know your family had to go through.ROSSNER: When we were younger we didn't know that it was that bad.
F3: I think it's one reason that I'm in the union.
ROSSNER: We didn't know it was bad; we lived it and we didn't know we were
enduring a great deal.M1: I was practically grown before I realized that I was really a very poor
person (laughter).F4: Well everyone else around you was a very poor person.
ROSSNER: Then when we looked back; when the sorrow comes or the sadness comes
00:29:00and the pushing come -- when we look back and see what our father and what our mother -- what they were deprived of and what they lost because of not having -- that's when we start pushing a little harder and when we feel a little sad.STONEY: OK. I want to hold it just --