J. G. (Wingate) Krause and Cynthia Haynes Interview

 J. G. (WINGATE)KRAUSE: You people are always lending me.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. OK. All right, so.

KRAUSE: We published an editorial.

M1: Excuse me, I just lost my setting.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Check. He's got to check.

JAMIE STONEY: Are we there? Back.

GEORGE STONEY: Yes.

JAMIE STONEY: OK.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. It's all right now?

JAMIE STONEY: No, I had his headphone unplugged.

KRAUSE: OK.

GEORGE STONEY: All right so now, we were publishing --

KRAUSE: The Independent came out strong for moving the courthouse to Kannapolis. At that time, we didn't know that Mrs. C.A. Cannon was ramrodding the campaign in Concord to have it renovated. Mr. Cannon told us about it laughingly and -- 00:01:00but didn't make any attempt to stop our campaign and incidentally the courthouse foundation failed. (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: Give us a kind of thumbnail description of Cannon.

KRAUSE: You know, I didn't --

GEORGE STONEY: Just te--

KRAUSE: Charles is the only one I knew and then --

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Just tell us about Charlie Cannon.

KRAUSE: Well, I had a -- I have a lot of respect for him. For Charles Cannon. He personifies, to me, what's good about, about America. I mean, he's -- he had high principles and integrity. What he told you, if he told you to, uh, something, promised to do something, he did it. And if he said no to anything, 00:02:00he was, he was against it. But he didn't mind, he didn't. He listened and he went along with the times. One thing I remember is when Governor Kerr Scott was running, he was advocating spending an awful lot of money to build new roads, farm to market roads. And Mr. Cannon did not -- was dead set against that. But a few years later, after Kerr Scott's tenure in office and the roads were built, he told me one time he thought that was the best thing that had happened. He said I was wrong about Scott. He didn't mind admitting it if he was wrong, 00:03:00which was seldom. He was -- well I, it's just hard for me to put into words how much I respected Charles Cannon and a lot of people here did.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, he seemed to become something, again, stop it just a minute. He seemed to have had a great influence.

KRAUSE: Um. Yeah. About the blacks getting equal treatment in Kannapolis, I think Kannapolis was ahead of its -- ahead of the rest of the country in handling that situation. And, and I think we were fair and I think that is -- 00:04:00goes back to the common sense and conscientious leadership of C.A. Cannon. When -- I remember when the -- in Greensboro there was a big to-do about several black students wanting to eat at the cafeteria downtown and they couldn't. And there was only one eating place in Kannapolis at that time in the downtown area. I don't know where this, uh, were -- and the cafe owner rented his building from Cannon Mills company. He got the word that if any blacks came to his place to serve them with no -- with no comment, with freedom as if you would a regular 00:05:00customer. And I don't know whether one -- there was one group, I think, that went in there and they never came back. Uh, the schools here, I'm not sure they would be considered proper now, but uh, the school people made -- selected black studen ts and assigned them to white schools that we had at least a token integration. And, and the management at the mill company was always sensitive to 00:06:00the -- to what the -- to everyone in the community and including the blacks. They knew how they'd felt, they knew the leaders over there would get word if -- would get word to the management if it's something going wrong in their community and the mill people tried to straighten it out.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, now this fella Jones -- Reverend Jones -- who's been a pretty strong black minister, had been pretty strong in favor of the unions. Where does all that come from?

KRAUSE: I don't know, I never heard of Jones until the last couple days before the union vote year. I don't know anything about him.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm. Yeah. OK. Now, do you have anything you'd like to say before we close up?

KRAUSE: Um, I'm not sure what we've done.

GEORGE STONEY: (laughter)

KRAUSE: Can you brief me again?

GEORGE STONEY: Well, do you want to stop it just a moment?

KRAUSE: Well, I --

GEORGE STONEY: OK, thank you. That was great. Thank you very much and that's business, but being on a nice one, go ahead. Tell us how you got in the cotton mill?

CYNTHIA HAYNES: Well, I got started in the Cannon mill, was I had worked in the hosiery mill since I was 19 and I quit and got me a job at Cannon Mill when I was 25. That's how I got started.

GEORGE STONEY: And when was that?

HAYNES: When I was 25, that was in '67. I had four babies then.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you have any -- tell us about your parents and did you come from a cotton mill tradition?

HAYNES: I came from a cotton mill family. My grandfather, my father, my mother, 00:08:00my uncles, aunts, cousins, you name it, we all worked in Cannon Mill.

GEORGE STONEY: What did they tell you about Cannon Mills?

HAYNES: Well, they always talked about how hard it was to work in Cannon Mill and when my mother worked for Cannon Mill, they didn't have air conditioning. And she would come home in the summertime and there wouldn't be a dry thread in her blouse, and it was hard work, and it was hot, and it was dirty.

JUDITH HELFAND: You know before you listed what everybody did in the meal. You said my daddy did this, and my granddad did this, and then you told me what was it that your granddad used to say about working in the mill?

HAYNES: Oh.

HELFAND: So could you list what everybody did, and what you do, where they worked, in a real -- and then, what your granddad thought about, you know, what a job was.

HAYNES: My grandpa was a weaver for, uh, Cannon Mill plant four for about 40 years, I guess. And if anybody -- if he knew anybody that didn't work for Cannon Mill, they wasn't working. He'd say they wasn't work in pie factory 00:09:00because they didn't -- and a lot of the times they would have a better job than he, but he thought if you didn't work for Cannon you wasn't working. (laughter) And he probably still thinks that.

HELFAND: Now the other day you were spending time with your granddad and you told him what you were doing --

HAYNES: Yeah.

HELFAND: -- right?

HAYNES: Yeah.

HELFAND: Can you describe that whole little scene for us and what he said to you?

HAYNES: When we started the union campaign, I went to see Grandpa. He's 94 years old and he's been retired, I guess, 29 years. And I went to see him and I said "Grandpa" -- you have to holler -- I said, "Grandpa, we going to try and get the union in Cannon Mill." He said, "You'll never do it." (laughter)

HELFAND: Why did he say that?

HAYNES: I don't know, I guess he just feels like we'll never get a union in because people still, it's been handed down from generation to generation, that the union is bad, that they're the mafia, they're hoodlums, they're 00:10:00criminals and I guess that's why he said that.

GEORGE STONEY: Have they ever -- did you grow up with the stories about the unions in the mills?

HAYNES: Yeah, I grew up with stories about the unions. All I've heard about was strikes. That's the main battle cry and we have a bunch of store buildings now down on Central Avenue and they call them the union stores because in '34, that's where the union held their meetings. And to this day, it's called the union stores. And I'd like to show them to y'all.

GEORGE STONEY: Now what can you tell us about the 1921 strike? Did you hear anything about that, way back in '21?

HAYNES: The only thing I've ever heard about strikes was they said that when the union tried to get in back, they call it back in the olden days -- they didn't tell me any dates but -- they said the people like starved to death and 00:11:00they said one union came in town and got their money and left town and didn't care what happened to them. And that's one reason that people don't like unions, they still remember that story.

GEORGE STONEY: Now did they ever describe to you the National Guard, the soldiers coming here during '34?

HAYNES: No, they never told me anything about the National Guard, but my aunt remembers. My great uncle was a union organizer and his brother, which is my grandfather, was against the union. And my grandpa crossed the picket line and my great uncle was an organizer and he tried to talk grandpa into voting for the union, but he wouldn't. He thought he would starve to death if he went on strike. And my great uncle stayed with him about two weeks and he carried a gun, it was strap to his leg because it was tough on unions back then. And grandpa had six kids and he was afraid for him to stay there. And so my uncle finally 00:12:00decided to go stay with the union organizers and back then they had to sleep on cots. They had -- they had rented this building, I guess, and they slept on cots and some people tell me that it was on Sycamore Street where they stayed. That's right behind plant four.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, when -- tell -- what did you know about the '34 strike? Did you ever hear much about that?

HAYNES: I don't know anything about it except when we started this union campaign, I didn't even know my uncle was an organizer. But my daddy's sister started to tell me about it and I didn't even know that until then.

GEORGE STONEY: How do you feel about that?

HAYNES: My uncle being, oh lord, I like it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now say, "My uncle being an organizer."

HAYNES: My uncle being an organizer thrills me to death. I told my aunt that it 00:13:00must be running in my blood. (laughter) It does, it thrills me.

HELFAND: Now could you describe, describe the time going up here? What you thought about the mills and how -- what -- how the town and why you think the union is a dirty word around here? But base it on, you know, the way that you grew up here and what you saw.

HAYNES: Well, I grew up in Kannapolis. I was born at Cabarrus Hospital down here between Kannapolis and Concord and I grew up here. And my mother always told me all my life to get me an education and not work in Cannon Mill. But I was hardheaded and when I got 15 years old, I'm going get married. And she didn't want me to, but I did anyway. I got married and I quit school and I didn't -- I couldn't go to work then, I was too young. And like I said, I went to work when I was 19 in a hosiery mill and then when I got 25, I went to work in the mill. But my mother never did want me to do that. And uh, the only 00:14:00thing, every time you mention unions, strike is right up there beside everything. If you mention union like, if you had mentioned boy, somebody would say girl. If you would mention black, somebody would say Negro. If you say union year, they going to say strike. That's all they can remember. And there's been a lot of lies told about them strikes, too. The strikes were, I don't -- I wasn't there, but I just d on't believe it was as bad as people said it was. It could have been, but --

HELFAND: Now, you --

GEORGE STONEY: Now, is there --

HAYNES: My --

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry.

HAYNES: My aunt -- my daddy's sister -- said that when grandpa was working and they was on strike, she said she didn't remember anybody starving. She said they had plenty to eat, but of course Grandpa worked, he didn't strike, so I don't know.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, the, they've shown a lot of these pictures of strikes here 00:15:00and we have a lot of pictures of the National Guard being here and the machine guns around and so forth. We know from the documents that Mr. Cannon asked the governor to send those guards here.

HAYNES: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: But here, everybody says the union brought them here. Could you talk about that?

HAYNES: Well, talking about the government sending the guards here and everybody says the union. The union gets blamed for anything bad, they still do. Anything bad that happens, the union did it. But if they do, like, this pension fund, the union was the cause of Terry Sanford coming here, they was the cause of us getting national attention, but you get people around here to admit that it'd be like pulling teeth. They will not admit it. Some people will, but some people won't. Like my daddy, he says that that old union, I have on union buttons and 00:16:00badges and he'll still say that old union. (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: Now, uh, when you went to school here, didn't you?

HAYNES: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you describe what kind of history they taught you about unions?

HAYNES: They never did teach anything about unions in school. They never did mention it. Because that's a dirty word in Kannapolis. The teachers around here don't even belong to unions, I don't think.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you know Mr. Cannon?

HAYNES: Yeah, I knew Mr. Cannon.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about him?

HAYNES: All I know about Mr. Cannon is everybody always told me this was a one horse town and Mr. Cannon was the horse. He owned the town. He owned the town, the newspaper, he owned everything. Can I say something about this?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, sure.

HAYNES: This article right here appeared in The Daily Independent on June the 24th, 1991. We had just started our union campaign. Had Mr. Cannon owned Kannapolis then, this article would not have appeared in The Daily Independent.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you hold it up? I just want Jamie to just go in and get a very tight close-up.

HELFAND: And why don't you tell us what it's about?

HAYNES: It's about the Fieldcrest executives and their pay. And [Ron Ely?] --

GEORGE STONEY: No, she's got to hold it.

HAYNES: OK. OK. [Ron Ely?] made a million and a quarter the last year he worked for Cannon. When he was asked to resigned, he left with 750-- $790,000 severance pay. Not counting his stock in other stuff. And during this time, the company was telling us that they were losing money. And even the anti-union people got mad about that.

GEORGE STONEY: Good.

HAYNES: So that's pretty good when you make them mad.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, we were talking --

HAYNES: Oh, and I can say one more thing about Ron Ely. His pension from Cannon -- from Fieldcrest-Cannon -- is $17,000 a month. A month. And some of the workers don't even make that a year.

GEORGE STONEY: Now you have been writing to the papers, I believe. Could you talk a little about that?

HAYNES: Yeah, I've been -- I wrote a letter to The Daily Independent. In the viewpoint page -- the letters to the editor -- and I told them that if the businessmen and the preachers would stay out of our business, we could get us a union because we need a union. Here's a letter from a Baptist minister condemning the union and telling people not to vote for the union. And you can't see his pic-- there's no picture on there but he's black. They're trying to change the black people's mind. They think only black people want 00:19:00the union, but that's a lie. White people do too. And this is Emanuel Stowe. He's been a bondsman in Kannapolis for -- I'm 49 and I've been knowing him all my life. And he used to get my daddy out of jail when he was drunk and I was very disappointed with Mr. Stowe. Because he knows how hard the working people have it here.

GEORGE STONEY: How has the union handled this business of the supposed conflict between the blacks and the whites? That's a hard thing.

HAYNES: Yeah. The union, I don't know how they handle it, but they're handling it well because the blacks and the whites are coming together. And when you go to a union meeting, everybody seemed like one. Like I told some of my friends in '85, I didn't know what real friends were until I met the union organizers and we start having union meets, because everybody's for everybody 00:20:00else. All for one. And I had never experienced that before.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, now we want to counter that --

HELFAND: Don't rustle your papers.

GEORGE STONEY: With all the testimony we've been getting from people around who say that they don't want the union because it's going to split up the town, it's going to make people angry with each other. Could you talk about that -- because you just start off by saying, "Well, I've lived here all my life and."

JAMIE STONEY: I've got to pop in a battery.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Hold it.

HAYNES: -- but he's, uh, millionaire in property. He really is. He might own the union stores, I don't know.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

HAYNES: I've forgotten what to say.

GEORGE STONEY: Hold it just a minute.

HAYNES: My mother worked for Cannon Mill 35 years and she died with brown lung. When she retired, me and my husband tried to get her to see a lawyer then and start proceeding to get compensation. She said no, said I didn't -- Cannon Mill didn't ask me to come to work there, I asked them. So she let it go on 00:21:00and go on and she kept getting worse and worse. And we finally got her to see a lawyer, Jim Lore. He had put letters in Kannapolis papers telling people if they needed help with brown lung, he would help them. So we went to him. And we had, we had to end up taking her all the way to Raleigh for a hearing. And the Cannon Mill lawyers was there, of course. And they stood up and said that they knew the woman had brown lung or something seriously wrong with her lungs because you could hear her breathing all over the place. But the statute of limitations had run out, so they didn't have to help her. And all she wanted was her medical bills. She didn't want to get rich. That's all she wanted.

HELFAND: Now, prior to that you were working in the same department. She was working and then your mother pleaded with you to move, right? And you did. So can you talk about that?

HAYNES: Yeah.

HELFAND: First time we talked about that, Cynthia, you got mad.

HAYNES: Yeah.

HELFAND: Don't -- look at me, don't touch the papers.

HAYNES: I was working in the spinning room too, she had already retired with her --

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry, start it and say, "My mother'd already retired, so I was working."

HAYNES: My mother had already retired and I was working in the spinning room and I had four asthma attacks in four months and was hospitalized. And the doctors around here have been bought off too and they said I had asthma. So Momma said, "I want you to go to your overseer and tell him to move you to a cleaner area, lint -- more lint-free area." She said, "I don't want you to end up like me." So I went to my overseer and he said, "Cyn, I don't think I can get you a transfer." I said, "Well, a girl just got one two weeks ago." I said, "Can't you see if you can try?" He said, "I'll try." So they sent me to the medical department and they got the nurses trained, too. She said you can't get no medical transfer and I said that ain't what I been told and 00:23:00I'm going to try. And the doctor there, he was -- he had been a Navy doctor before he came to Cannon and he said anybody that had had four asthma attacks in four months needed to be moved and he got me my transfer. And I had to sign a paper saying that I didn't ha ve brown lung and that I used to smoke before I could get my transfer. And I still got that paper. And so I got my transfer and I haven't had an asthma attack since. So that proves it was the lint.

HELFAND: How does that relate to you wanting this union and working so hard?

HAYNES: Well, I feel like we need a union for better health benefits, but my main beef is fair treatment. Nobody's treated alike in Cannon Mill. If anybody's ever worked in there, they know. Even shifts, the first shift is treated better than second and third. If you're not a pet or a buddy, you 00:24:00might as well forget it. And we thought David Murdoch would end the buddy system, but he couldn't even break it up. And then Fieldcrest came in, they helped a little bit, but not much. And we still got the buddy system.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, back in '34, a lot of people who were active in the unions immediately got fired. What gives you the courage and assurance that the same thing won't happen to you now?

HAYNES: Well, in '85, I was a union activist. That's what they called me in the paper. And the union assured me that if I was fired, that they would be behind me all the way. In fact, about seven or eight people got fired and they were -- the union got them their job back, but they could either take their job or take a settlement. And they took a settlement because the union told them 00:25:00that if they took their job back and the union didn't win that time, that the company could turn right around and fire them the next day and there'd be nothing they could do. So they took the settlement, they didn't take their job. And they tell me the same thing now. If I get fired for any reason, it better be a good reason because they can't fire me, I've been on TV and everything. And even a girl I met at the nursing home where my daddy is, she's from up north and she knows a lot about unions and she told me since I've been on television that if they ever fired me before I retire, they have to have a good reason. So, that's - - it don't bother me.

GEORGE STONEY: Now you know, I think -- and this is something that a lot of union people ought to know -- that that rule about the whole government labor relations of the law was a result of unions fighting politically for generations 00:26:00to get it in there?

HAYNES: Yes.

GEORGE STONEY: It didn't just happen because the federal government.

HAYNES: That's right. If it hadn't been for unions -- if it hadn't been for unions, even the people that work that are not, that don't belong unions, wouldn't be as well off as they are now. I firmly believe that.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. I want you to say that and then mention the occupational safety and health rules and other rules that are there only because the unions keep pushing them. Employees didn't push for them, the union did.

HAYNES: If it hadn't been for unions, we wouldn't have OSHA now. We wouldn't have any of the benefits that we have now, even non-union plants benefit from union plants.

GEORGE STONEY: I'm going to say that -- I should say that again. A lot of people don't know what OSHA is, so --

HAYNES: Let me say one more thing.

GEORGE STONEY: -- it's occupational safe and health, or say protection against brown lung and that kind of thing, OK?

GEORGE STONEY: OSHA is the occupational safety and health administration and that's what they -- they come in the mill. In fact, they've been in Fieldcrest-Cannon investigating things that happened. Like this one guy fell. He was on what they call a dinky and he fell to the bottom in an elevator, and just recently all those people got hurt in the elevators the company was fined, but if it hadn't been for unions, we wouldn't have any of that. We would still be back in sweatshops earning 30 cents an hour working 12 and 16 hours a day. But you make people around here believe it, they won't.

GEORGE STONEY: What gives you the courage to keep on?

HAYNES: I want me a union.

GEORGE STONEY: Just say "I've got the courage because..."

HAYNES: The reason I keep on like I am is I want me a union. I want one bad because I feel like the whole community would be better off. And people would learn to stick together. Now people backstab each other and don't care just so they get to the top. They don't care about the other man. But I feel like a 00:28:00union would bring the community together. If it hadn't been for Phillip Marce and that union down there, we wouldn't have got as close to this election as we did. The vote wouldn't have been as close, because they helped us a lot.

GEORGE STONEY: How do you feel about outsiders and unions?

HAYNES: What do you mean?

GEORGE STONEY: Well, the people over -- we were talking over at the gates, oh, it's just some people from New York, people from Atlanta coming in here.

HAYNES: Oh. People around here feel like that the union is a mafia. Foreigners, come from outer space. And if they would come to the meetings and meet those people, I feel like they're some of the best friends I've ever had. I really do.

HELFAND: Can you talk about the way that the -- that the mill has been using history to frame people? What they've been doing. And really go for it, 00:29:00Cynthia, really think about it. Take it away.

HAYNES: They take --

HELFAND: Look --