Nell Shadinger, Florence Shadinger, and Grace Shadinger Interview 3

 GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Now tell us what happened when your family -- how your family was told to move and then what happened after that.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yes. After the strike, Mama and Daddy, they accused Daddy of mastering one in Carrollton. And he didn't, no way. He was too upset about the whole thing. And they had to do something. So they went in the old hotel at Raymond, Georgia, about 11 -- 6, something like that, miles from here. And the Central Georgia Railroad men, that was their overnight stay there. They stayed in the caboose till Mama started that. Well, she cooked. She went around over the country, which Raymond is a very small town, on the farms and bought 00:01:00vegetables, chicken, like that. Some of 'em boarded there except at night. And that was how they made their living. Mama worked very, very hard.

GEORGE STONEY: Now tell it again one more time and mention boarding house very soon you see. Ok? Are you ready?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Ok

GEORGE STONEY: Ok

FLORENCE SHADINGER: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Are you kicking her under the table?

FLORENCE SHANDIGNER: No.

GRACE SHADINGER: She don't need no help to mess up. (laughter)

GEORGE STONEY: Ok?

(inaudible crosstalk)

FLORENCE SHADINGER: When the Newnan Cotton Mill, after the strike, asked Mama and Daddy to vacate the house, well, Mama was always the leader. She went to Raymond. Somebody told her about this place being empty. And she rented it. Mama and Daddy rented it and then, ah, Central of Georgia railroad men, I believe they run a switch track from here to Cedartown -- part of 'em come from 00:02:00Cedartown -- well, they stayed overnight every night in Raymond, Georgia. Mama cooked supper for 'em every night and sometimes if they come in from Cedartown, Georgia, she had their breakfast ready. When they come through, they'd stop and come in. Some of 'em boarded there. They slept there, but that's how they survived, they made their living.

GEORGE STONEY: Very good.

JUDITH HELFAND: (inaudible)

NELL SHANDIGNER: I was just going to tell how we lived on the low salary -- how we lived, you know, when the low salary was so low. My mother had always a big garden, had a cow, and we had milk and butter. She had chickens in the backyard. We had plenty of eggs, chickens. You know, you'd go out and wring their necks, 00:03:00you know. You didn't go in the store and buy 'em like you do now. And we had fried chicken every week.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: And she her own soap.

NELL SHADINGER: And she made her own soap, which was lye soap, in a big old iron washpot. Like years ago, I don't know whether y'all remember, the old black washpot. She made the soap that we scrubbed floors and scrubbed clothes with, things like that. And then she would go out in the fields when they would lay by corn. She would get the corn and make cornpone and make hominy with potash and fix hominy, as good a hominy as you've ever ate. You never bought it in a store that good. And she'd even rent up a little in a place over in a field like from us and raise a big garden of corn and stuff like that. We always had plenty to eat. We might not have had a lot of money, but we had plenty of love and plenty to eat. We never was without anything to eat. There was always plenty of it.

STONEY: Well, when you left -- had to leave East Newnan --

NELL SHADINGER: I didn't have to leave East Newnan.

STONEY: You didn't have to leave?

NELL SHADINGER: No.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Just Number 1 Mill.

STONEY: How did you feel about your parents getting asked to leave town?

NELL SHADINGER: I felt terrible.

STONEY: Can you say when my parents left town I felt terrible?

NELL SHADINGER: Well, when my parents had to leave from where was living for many years, since I was just what you say a baby, that's the only place I had ever remembered living. And it -- I felt terrible when that happened. And back then we just didn't have (inaudible) cars or anything in Raymond. Me and my husband, we'd walk down the railroad 7 miles from East Newnan to Raymond. When we went to see 'em, we walked along the railroad down there to see 'em. (inaudible)

FLORENCE SHADINGER: It was -- we cried. It was -- it really hurt. It hurt bad. I think the biggest thing that hurt was it was so untrue about Daddy, that that 00:05:00still hurts. If he'd have done it, you know, I'd be the first one to say he did. But he didn't and I know he didn't. But Daddy was a quiet kind of person. He didn't, ah, have a whole lot to say. He read a lot. He went a long ways in school and, ah, anyway, it (inaudible) Daddy.

STONEY: You were saying?

NELL SHADINGER: I don't remember what I was --

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, she was telling about the soap. I can tell y'all how it was made if you're interested. It's history. Ah, you have, ah, some kind of bin outside where you -- you burn hickory wood in the fireplace. Well, you save those ashes. You go out and put it in the ash hopper. Well, when it rained it would go through these ashes and you had something here to catch it that -- the 00:06:00grit that come through. Well, you bought a can of lye and mixed it with this ash hopper dripping and that, that's the best I know about it, because I never made any, but I'd watch Mama in the country when she's making it.

HELFAND: Now you started to say then union and then you were cutoff.

NELL SHADINGER: The union is not the worst thing in the world because in later years I see where it was beneficial to a lot of things. In fact, when I joined the union in later years and it is a help in some -- in some things.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: (inaudible)

STONEY: Tell us about how it was a help.

NELL SHADINGER: Well, a lot of things that would have been like seniority when 00:07:00you were working, if it was your time to step up, you got your step up. You got more in salary. You got your raises like they should be. When -- you know, when it come around time for you to get it, it was. And things like that. That's about the best I can tell you, you know, that -- what it will do.

STONEY: Well, Florence, you knew the mills before that.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: That's right.

STONEY: What was the difference?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, I never thought seniority count. I thought your work, you know, counted. You made production, you turned out the work because they's all competitive companies. They were, you know. Now, finally, Mount Vernon -- I don't know whether you've heard of this company or not -- they were -- was in Alabama, wasn't it?

GRACE SHADINGER: Uh hum.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: They bought out Newnan Cotton Mill because we run the same 00:08:00type of yarn they did. See, they were competitive. They bought it out and shut it down. Again -- we were again without a job. Well, they sent for me to come -- I shouldn't tell that -- "put in your application to go to Selma, Alabama. I would recommend it to them to come to work there." I was 40 something years old. They says, "We don't hire people that old yet. We like 'em younger. Time you get 'em learned, they're ready to retire," but says, "we want you." And so I went.

STONEY: Now why do you think we found a lot of people like Grace and like other people who are either afraid or ashamed to talk about this period? Why do you think that's true?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Because we were (inaudible). We were, yeah. And, ah, you shun it. If the subject come up -- of course, I'm proud of my part in it, but, you know, how they going to feel about hearing about you? And, ah, I don't know. Somebody come and start talking about Newan Cotton Mill, people that worked there, well, you sit there, you don't say anything because it -- it's not a good feeling to know, you know, that your own people that would think, you know, you were trashy or something -- that's a harsh word, you know, to say, but that's the way we felt about it growing up. But we thought they thought they were better. But we never felt that way about it. We never thought we was better than anybody, or they were. And, ah, we never knew -- we just knew they weren't. But 00:10:00everybody wasn't that way. They was --

STONEY: Has that changed since then?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, I would think so. Yeah, I think it's changed a lot because I know the merchants, you know, they would welcome our business because we didn't go in looking for the most expensive things they had. We were hunting the cheapest thing they had. And so it wasn't long after Roosevelt went in, things really started looking up for the mill people. And I think a lot of other companies, too. I don't know about the farmers, you know, all like that. I don't know. I don't know whether it helped the miners, but I do know about the mills.

STONEY: Grace, did you ever hear Roosevelt speak?

GRACE SHDINGER: Oh, sure.

STONEY: Tell us about it.

GRACE SHADINGER: I don't know a thing. I just heard him speak.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: But his fireside chats, they were great. I couldn't wait. They would mention it on radio he was going to have his fireside chat? Well, it was just like a daddy or something was going to come and talk to you that night. And it seemed like he just come right into the room and you believed every word he said, and it all came true just like he said it was. "All we had to fear was fear itself." And, ah, I believe that. It helped me a lot. Now my husband had passed up for the Marines. He never had to go. He was with the fire department. He did something else. I done forgot what that was. They classified -- is it 1A? Well, they put him -- is it 1F? He'd get another after he passed the -- because 00:12:00I think they thought we should have some -- a fireman, too, here. Of course, he wasn't the only fireman. Had some good firemans here in Newnan, but, ah, he never had to go. But we all gathered around the radio on the fireside chat.

STONEY: Do you remember when you first got your radio?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yes, we got that -- first electricity.

STONEY: just say when yo first got your electriy and then your radio.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, we got our electricity. They were the proudest bunch of people on the mill village you have ever seen. And the wire, they put one at the back of the house, up against it. Now that was something else. But we finally saved up enough to buy a tabletop round -- tabletop radio. Well, we thought we had arrived. You'd have to walk sometime to the next street to get water. The well was in the middle of the street. It was a neighborhood, ever so 00:13:00many houses there was another well. And we drawed water. It had a windlass. You know, I guess y'all seen the well. Yeah. We -- we would wind it up and that was another thing. When we had that water, it just give us more time to do what we had to do. If my baby was asleep at home in the house, I'd have to go to the well, I'd be so afraid he would fall or try to get up, get burned, or something. But you just opened the backdoor and right up against the wall, the hydrant come up. We lived in two rooms. We lived in the house with the Horster Family, friends of mine from the time they moved to Newnan on. We shared that. And 00:14:00finally we put a barrel, cut it half in two and where the stopper was in, we could stop it up and we'd draw water out -- I mean we could go out and turn on a faucet. Now people that never had to draw water and walk a long ways after don't know how we appreciated a faucet, share a faucet on the outside. And we thought it was great, and the electricity, too. And occasionally they would come through, they'd take the rent out of your money before you got it. But, anyway, they'd come by occasionally and, ah, tint the walls again and, ah, being -- I believe it was after I married they underpinned the houses on pillars. And finally I had moved off when they paved it and put curb and gutter over there on 00:15:00the mill village. But it still, I feel sad with I go through Berry Avenue because they's a lot of 'em that's not there anymore. They gone, but very sweet people.

STONEY: Were you given a chance to buy your house?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: She was. I didn't live on -- Grace did.

STONEY: Tell us about buying your house.

GRACE SHADINGER: Well, gave $2,030 for it, 10 years to pay. (inaudible)

FLORENCE SHADINGER: And then you sold it for much more'n $2,000, didn't you?

GRACE SHADINGER: Oh, yes. Sold it to a niece and her husband for rental property. Still seems like home.

STONEY: Is that why you're so rich?

GRACE SHADINGER: Yeah. Sold that house and got rich off of it.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: We was raised at 20 Berry Avenue. Now that is home. It's 00:16:00there. I go by. I still go by and look at it. The reason I do, because it's home. I almost bought it once, but I'm glad I didn't because I didn't want to live in it. I wanted for us to go back and have reunions or go back on holidays, go back home. But Grace bought 19. She didn't have a chance to buy 20, and I'm glad I didn't buy it now because it's so different from what it was. You know, it just goes on. Nothing stays the same.

STONEY: Now we were over there last night as we noticed that there was a revival tent up.

HELFAND: (inaudible) That's a different town George.

STONEY: That's right its East Newnan.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, and we used to have then, and I guess still do, but 00:17:00they didn't have it. Right above off of (inaudible) Wilcox Street -- we lived on Berry Avenue (inaudible) they used to be -- there was a big empty lot there on Sutherland Drive that they put big tents and they were very charismatic, you know, strict, you know. And I never went inside of 'em, but I'd sit out on the grass outside and listen at it. It's all right to be charismatic, but we weren't brought up like that. We, ah, we had our Bible. We went by the rules of the Bible, the Ten Commandments. We were taught that and, ah, we come in. We'd have maybe an argument with another child. We would come out, "I'm never going to play with her anymore." Daddy'd say, "Florence, if you can't say anything good, don't say anything." That's the way he believed. And we were raised to believe 00:18:00we were only -- back then everybody thought god had only promised us bread and water. Well, you read, you find it's different. (inaudible) and you know. And we believed that, all of us did, for a long, long time.

STONEY: Your social life, I think, was pretty well built around the church, was it? Could you talk about it?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, uh huh, both churches, Mills Chapel and Lovejoy. My friends were Baptists. We were very, very young and I'd go to both of 'em. I'd go with them. Sometimes they would come to me, but the superintendent of Newnan Cotton Mill was Mr. William Reynolds and he was Methodist. Well, we all went to the Baptist. And, ah, he wouldn't care where we went on and, ah, he'd come 00:19:00around every Sunday morning and pick us all up if the weather was real bad. He didn't want us -- he had feelings enough not to want us to walk in bad weather to it. He'd put us out at Baptist Church. He'd go on up to his church, to Lovejoy. Well, you know, one night I's laying in bed I's thinking about, you know, anybody has got to be that much caring about little cotton mill children to see that they didn't have to walk, because we had no way to go -- we didn't have a car, anybody much have a car -- see that we got to chruch on Sunday morning. And, I don't know, something come to me says, "He's not wrong." I didn't think anybody at Mill Chapel was wrong. I don't mean that, but I wanted to be at church where that man was. And I joined it in '26. 1926, I joined 00:20:00Lovejoy Church. Preacher Hamilton was the minister. I meant to join when Shackelford was there. He was such a good preacher. He'd come down to Murray Street School and tell little jokes to make us laugh. Well, I think, "Well, I just go to join." The people at Lovejoy just kept impressing me and I was so young, second and third grade, and that's what -- that was the mill church and so was Lovejoy -- I mean Mill Chapel Baptist, Lovejoy, United American (laughs) -- United Lovejoy Methodist Church.

STONEY: Tell me about your brother?

NELL SHADINGER: About my brother? Well, there ain't too much to tell about him.

STONEY: Now just, just a moment

NELL SHADINGER: I don't know how to tell you much about him.

GRACE SHADINGER: We just have a brother, that's it.

NELL SHADINGER: Except I have a brother. I mean I can't remember to tell you much of anything about him.

STONEY: Well, I gather that he was -- he was down there at the time that the flying squadron came to town.

GRACE SHADINGER: We're not going to discuss that now. Uh uhm.

NELL SHADINGER: Because he told us no.

STONEY: Now your brother told you no?

NELL SHADINGER: No.

STONEY: Do you have any idea why he feels that way?

GRACE SHADINGER: Don't answer that Nell.

NELL SHADINGER: He won't let me.

GRACE SHADINGER: Tell him to get off the subject.

NELL SHADINGER: The reason why we're saying this to you, he has asked us not to and we go by his wishes.

STONEY: That's all I wanted to know is just that statement. Okay.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Sometimes we have things happen in our life you just don't talk about.

STONEY: It's important. You see, what I like is that that shows a certain respect for people's -- what people feel.

GRACE SHADINGER: Uh huh.

NELL SHADINGER: Well, I can say this. We had the best mother and daddy, and I feel like whatever I have accomplished in my life now I feel like I they're -- they entitled to, you know -- because they taught us how they taught us.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: We would take nothing (inaudible).

NELL SHADINGER: You know, I wouldn't want to go to the richest family in the world and change that.

STONEY: But what amazes me is that almost six decades later a lot of people feel just like your brother feels, this is not something to talk about.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Now it was a bad time in our life and we like to remember the better time of our lives. And I think that's the way they feel about it.

STONEY: Do you think that's the reason why so many people say that they'd rather not talk about it?

NELL SHADINGER: Yeah.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: No -- ah, yeah. I like to think of the happier time of life, you know, because I have so many, many sweet memories. And I like to think about them, not the bad times; the good times, because Mama and Daddy hurt so bad, you know, because they were unjustly accused. That hurt, too, and, ah -- but they made it.

NELL SHADINGER: If she could look back at us today and she would see where we all have come to, she would smile. She would be very happy. She wouldn't be disappointed at all.

STONEY: I would think so. Just look at this house, your beautiful lawn, Grace's 00:24:00furniture, the lace spread here. I mean this is -- this is --

GRACE SHADINGER: This is just a house, just a building.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, it is, but you heard a song "You've Come a Long Way, Baby"?

GRACE SHADINGER: Yeah, we did.

NELL SHADINGER: And we had, you know, good doctors here in Newnan. And I can remember Dr. Joe Pilliston(?) told me one time when I had to go to him, he said some of the best people in the world came from the cotton mill.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Said he'd put 'em up against anybody.

NELL SHADINGER: He said he's put it up against anybody.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: They were such sharing people and caring. That's what -- and that taught me. Till this day I share and I love and I think we all do.

NELL SHADINGER: They accused me of the giver of the family. (laughs)

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I am, too. I could show you a letter I got today from the Methodist Home for Wayward Boys where I help. You run into it, you help. Maybe you can't give but $10 or $15, but that's that much.

HELFAND: Grace, you got to go back to Newnan, didn't you?

GRACE SHADINGER: Go back to Newnan?

HELFAND: You went back to Newnan years later, didn't you?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: She didn't leave.

GRACE SHADINGER: I never did leave.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: She stayed.

GRACE SHADINGER: It was rough times there.

NELL SHADINGER: I was the one that left Newnan and was gone 30 years. And I came back in 1984. I have been retired 7 years. I came back. But this is home and I'm a-living where I was living, above Atlanta, in Tucker, Georgia, where I was living there. Well, all my family was here, so I moved back here.

HELFAND: Did your mother and father ever come back to Newnan?

INAUDIBLE

NELL SHADINGER: Uh hum, right on the mill village.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, can I tell?

GRACE SHADINGER: Yeah, go ahead and tell.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: (inaudible) Yeah, they moved back. I saw Harry Taylor, the superintendent there. I said, "Mama and Daddy back on the mill village." He said, "Okay."

NELL SHADINGER: And that's where we lived when our daddy and mother died(??).

GRACE SHADINGER: Oh, during the war the house we were renting sold. I was working back in Newnan Cotton Mill and that is when they got me a house, because the house I was lived in sold and they kept going up on the rent ever month. I was trying to find a house. It wasn't easy during the war to find a house, and that is when we moved back.

NELL SHADINGER: Yeah.

GRACE SHADINGER: Because I was leaving. Nell and myself were going to leave and go to East Point and go to work in someplace uncle had got -- what was the name of that place?

NELL SHADINGER: I done forgot what it was.

GRACE SHADINGER: But they asked me if -- my overseer asked me, said, "Grace, do 00:27:00you want to stay?" I told him I would love to stay, but that we would have to go. He said, "No, you won't." And he said, he says, "I'll go to Harry Taylor" and (inaudible) found us a house in a few days across the street from where I was raised.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, we was raised at 20 and we move in 19.

NELL SHADINGER: Now this was after World War II -- well, it was during World War II, wasn't it, because I was back at home then.

STONEY: Now your father and mother were asked to leave in 1934.

GRACE SHADINGER: I don't know when it was.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I don't remember either.

NELL SHADINGER: 193--

GRACE SHADINGER: We lived in that house for almost a year. I think we lived in there for almost a year.

NELL SHADINGER: 1935 is where that was, but the reason why, I got married in 1934 and then after -- was the next year they was moving, in 1935.

STONEY: And how long was it before they could move back?

GRACE SHADINGER: Let me see. First moved back didn't -- (inaudible) back in the 00:28:00mill, we rented off the mill village and, ah, then after the war this house that we were living in sold. So that's when we moved back on the mill village.

NELL SHADINGER: 1944.

GRACE SHADINGER: That part of our life is just gone. It's just something that's just disappeared, you know.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, the love and the caring stayed with us.

NELL SHADINGER: We moved back in 1944.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: And a job to work at, to make a living. I'm not ungrateful for that either. Now we were just burned out. We had nothing but each other and we (inaudible) we were grateful, very grateful that Daddy had a job. And we growed up old enough to go to work and help, too. But we're not ungrateful people.

STONEY: Do you have any pictures of the boarding house?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I had one of Daddy or Mama, one, standing beside.

GRACE SHADINGER: You saw it. You saw it. The one with grandmother and granddaddy 00:29:00-- ah, my mother and grandmother? And Daddy was standing behind 'em? That is at the end of the porch.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: (inaudible)

NELL SHADINGER: Is this it?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yes, that's it right there. Yeah, that-- it was a big house. That was the front porch. But I got one of my granddaddy and --

HELFAND: Grace, did you go to live with your parents?

GRACE SHADINGER: No. I would go down and visit some, not much. I didn't like it down there -- too lonesome.

NELL SHADINGER: I came back with my husband in service and then we was living on Sutherland Drive and the house sold and then we -- she and I were working back in the mill at that time. I had left a hosiery mill and they would put me back to work and I could make more money by working in the cotton mill, so I went back to the cotton mill and we moved to 19 Berry Avenue.

HELFAND: Grace will you –

M1: (inaudible)