Leroy McCoy Interview

GEORGE STONEY: Why don't you sit here and, uh --

M1: Jamie, you'll be talking with him.

JAMIE STONEY: I'm sorry.

GEORGE STONEY: 1970.

M2: 1970, 17, yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: (clicks) OK.

F1: Um.

GEORGE STONEY: Just ask him, "Tell us about"--

F1: Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about the strike.

LEROY MCCOY: Well, uh, all we did was, uh, people --

GEORGE STONEY: Stop. Ask him what he did in the mill.

F1: OK. What did -- what was your job in the mill?

MCCOY: Well, in 19 and uh, during the strike, I worked my spinning room, then, for Marvin Sergeant. And, uh, I went from the spinning room to the spooling room. And, uh, learned to fix in there, and when we put the new machinery in, well, I helped the men put the new spoolers -- back in the time when we had the old spoolers, we had about 36 women on a shift. And they have to use hand 00:01:00knotters. And we put the automatic (inaudible) spoolers in there, and uh, there wasn't but about nine women working on each shift. And, uh, it, it cut down on lots of help. But I think most of the help was, uh, distributed through the middle and didn't get played up or anything, but we've had a better production, much better production after we put in the automatic spoolers.

F1: I know my mother worked in the spooler.

MCCOY: I know, she worked for me for years.

F1: She thought the world of you. I remember that.

MCCOY: And I did, her, too. She was a good woman.

F1: Well, what happened -- the strike. Tell us about the strike.

MCCOY: Well, all we did was, uh, just shut down and stay shut down until the strike got over with and everybody went back to work.

F1: What was it like?

MCCOY: Well, it just -- people hanging around the gates and other companies, like Exposition and William Hill and all that bunch of people came over. Helped 00:02:00the people that was out there. But some of them acted so dirty that, when the strike was over, well, they didn't come back to work.

F1: Hmm. Well, I heard that there was -- somebody got killed, a watchman --

MCCOY: Not that I know of.

F1: Really?

MCCOY: No.

F1: Hmm.

MCCOY: There weren't nobody got killed at Colin Bay.

F1: Hmm. It was Barbara was telling us about a Jimmy Simpson -- Simpkins.

MCCOY: Simpkins.

F1: That got pulled -- she was trying to go in the mill, and the guards were trying to pull her in, and the strikers were trying to pull her out, and she --

MCCOY: Well, a lot of that was going on.

F1: -- crippled her. Was it?

MCCOY: That's some of them that worked in the, in the bag mills were mostly the ones that stayed working, but as far as cotton mill, we shut the cotton mill down.

F1: So, you just was -- shut it down completely on --

MCCOY: They shut it down completely and told the people that we'd let them 00:03:00know whenever to come back to work.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: And quick as all that crowd from all these other mills went away while we went back to work. And didn't have no trouble with our help at all. And nobody wanted to strike because I don't know how they found out or what -- when it was gonna be something like a raise. We already give the raise two or three weeks ahead of the union hollerin'. Nobody just never would vote in a union up there. In other words, you didn't have to pay union dues, and you was getting as much money as they asked for.

F1: Hmm. So, every time the union would say you need -- y'all need a raise, you'd get a raise.

MCCOY: We'd get a raise. (chuckles)

F1: Oh. That was one way to --

MCCOY: And, uh, they never -- we never had a union up there, except, I think, 00:04:00some of the people in the bag mill -- a few, a few of them joined a union, but we just never did have no real union. And those people that joined it, we didn't fire them. That was their business.

F1: Mm. So how long was the mill closed down?

MCCOY: I think it's about three or four weeks. At the best of my knowledge. Remember back that far. You know, I'm -- be 79 years old next month, and I don't remember everything.

F1: (laughs)

MCCOY: (laughs)

F1: I'm 49, and I bet you remember more than I do.

GEORGE STONEY: One thing I'm sure you remember -- I want you to tell us how much you got -- the workers got paid when you first started working, and then what happened when the NRA came in.

MCCOY: Oh, when they come to eight hours a day? Well, I tell ya, when I first 00:05:00went to work up there, I was working 11 hours a day, and made $11.00 and 20 cents a week. 55 hours. But after that, I was making $18.00 and a half for eight hours a day. And, uh, they sent me to school, to Georgia Tech. I went out there and got my textile engineering course, and they gave me a supervisor job. And I stayed supervisor from 19 and 40 'til 1974.

F1: So, you were still working there when they closed down, though?

MCCOY: I was working there the last day they closed down the cotton mill. And I get a pension now.

F1: Do ya?

MCCOY: I still get my pension, and I know there was four of us that got a pension that still gettin' it. Carl Kimble got it. And, uh, there's two more fellas. I -- Mr. Head got one. You know, he stayed there -- I think Mr. Head was 00:06:00there about 50 years.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: And all total, in 1932, I was gone about two months, and I came back, and I stayed there from November the ninth, 1932, and I was there November the ninth, 1974, when they shut down.

F1: Do you mind telling how much your pension is?

MCCOY: Yes, I do mind.

F1: (laughs) OK. Well, I know that when Momma retired, she got $29.00 a month.

MCCOY: Well, that was, uh, there.

F1: Yep. A dollar for every year she'd been there.

MCCOY: Yep. My daddy --

F1: She dropped three months and they cut it out completely.

MCCOY: Well, my daddy got it for years.

F1: Did he? Momma didn't.

MCCOY: He got it, he got it from, uh -- let's see. He got it through 19 and 76. That's how long he got it, two years, I know.

F1: Yeah.

MCCOY: But, like I say, I was in supervision, and been there 42 years, and they give me my choice of taking a lump sum, or taking a pension, and I got smart and took the pension. And I'm still getting it.

F1: Smart. Yeah.

MCCOY: Traveler's Insurance Company sends me my pension every month. Puts it in my bank.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about his bosses.

F1: Well, what about your bosses?

MCCOY: My bosses? Mr. Duckett was a superintendent at the end of it. And Mr. George Watson was a general manager. Vice president of it. And Mr. Hankins was the president of it.

F1: Um, what did you think of the Else's. Did you --

MCCOY: The what?

F1: The Else's family.

MCCOY: The Else's was the greatest. I have to tell you that. When they had it. They were good people to work for. They treated people like they ought to be 00:08:00treated. And it sold, either two or three times. I -- from one person to another. And Allied Product owned it the last time through Fabric America.

F1: Mm-hmm. (whispering) Yeah. Um, you seem to be healthy.

MCCOY: I am healthy, nothing wrong with me.

F1: But there's always been talk about, you know, it was such an unhealthy place to work, you know, all the lint and the heat --

MCCOY: Well, well I had -- when I had the twine room, it was very -- there was lots of lint in there. But it ain't never hurt me.

F1: Mm. But they finally put in machines or something in there -- or I guess they put in the air conditioning?

MCCOY: Weren't no air conditioning except the spinning room.

F1: Oh.

MCCOY: The weave room has to have hot weather to keep the threads -- keep the 00:09:00size of it. The moisture at seven and a half percent.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: And, uh, they, uh, they didn't have no air conditioning. But, now, the spinning room had a water washed air condition. They had to have it up there. And sometimes that thing would go out and it'd get awful hot, and they'd just have to stop all the spinning room for a while until they got that going back. Got the air conditioner going back. 'Cause it'd get 95 to 100 degree in there sometime.

F1: Mm, mm, mm.

MCCOY: And the weave room stayed about 91, 92 degree all the time.

F1: How was it in the spool room? That's where my momma worked at.

MCCOY: Spool room was nice.

F1: Was it?

MCCOY: We had the, we had the -- this suction that, uh, instead of all the lint flying everywhere, it sucked it back through those suction tubes into a bag, and that was emptied everyday.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: All that dust flies through the air. It didn't fly through in the 00:10:00spooling room. It was in pretty good shape.

F1: Mm.

MCCOY: For years I ran the spool -- two spooling rooms, and we cut it down to one. And, uh, put in a longer spooler. And, uh, we kept that temperature in there about -- I reckon, around 75 to 80, 82 degree. And, uh, it was a pleasant place to work.

F1: How did y'all feel about people calling them lintheads?

MCCOY: (chuckles) I reckon that's what they thought they were. One of them -- some of them said it's an honest place to make a living.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: And they made pretty good money. I had, I had ladies in there back in the '60s and the early '70s that made 80, 90 dollars a week.

F1: Mm-hmm.

MCCOY: 40 hours.

F1: I think my --

MCCOY: We paid, we paid time and half time for all over 40 hours.

F1: I think Mommma made $18.00 when she first went to work up there, and I think she made about 60 when she retired.

MCCOY: Well, like I say, I, I worked 55 hours for $11.00 and 20 cents when I went to work up there in '27. And, uh, well, I, I drew a salary when -- 34 years of it.

F1: It was always so hard to, you know -- my mother would not say anything bad about that mill.

MCCOY: Well, like I say, I won't either, because it made a living for me, and I put six children through high school. Two of them through college. I got one now making $60,000.00 a year.

F1: That's great.

MCCOY: And in three years, she'll be making $76,000.00, so I reckon I gave her 00:12:00a good education.

F1: That's not Patricia, is it?

MCCOY: And Fulton Bag -- no, that's Judy, my youngest one.

F1: Oh.

MCCOY: She's in Chicago, she's head of Motorola, up there. She wants me to move up there, but, uh-uh.

F1: Where's this -- where she live?

MCCOY: Chicago.

F1: I see. Uh-huh.

MCCOY: Up at -- well, it's one of the outskirts, Buffalo Grove is where she's actually lives.

F1: Mm-hmm. So do -- what about your education? Did you get much?

MCCOY: I went to college out at Georgia Tech and got textile engineering course.

F1: That's great.

MCCOY: Didn't cost me a dime. Fulton Bag paid for it. They even take me out there and brought me back home every night. I went at night and worked in the day time. I worked -- I went to school four nights a week for three years.

F1: Were there anybody else around here that they did that for, or --

MCCOY: Uh, Tony Hider. He was in supervision. And, uh, I think Raymond New was in it. And I went out there when the -- idea of it. They told me, when I got through with it, well, they'd give me a supervisor job, and they kept their word. They gave me a supervisor job when I got through.

F1: Uh, so you were there 55 years, you said?

MCCOY: No, I was there 47 total. 42 straight years. I worked five years and went away two months, come back and stayed 42 years, to the day. Come back to work November the ninth, 1932. And stayed there 'til November the ninth, 1974. 42 years exactly.

F1: Did you, um, grow up here, in the neighborhood, or in Cabbage Town, or...?

MCCOY: Would I?

F1: Did you?

MCCOY: Oh, yeah.

F1: So, you...

MCCOY: You asked me would I go or did I --

F1: Did you, did you grow up here in Cabbage Town?

MCCOY: I came back from Tennessee in uh, 19 and 26.

F1: And you lived here --

MCCOY: We used to live here before then. My father worked up there. We went to Copperhill, Tennessee. Well, that's where he went back. That's where I was born. And I stayed there -- when we went back, I stayed there last 15. I think we went back to Tennessee in 19 and 18. And we come back 1926. And I've been here ever since.

F1: That's a long time. (chuckles)

MCCOY: Yep. Well, I enjoyed every day I worked at Fulton Bag, myself, 'cause I got along with everybody.

F1: I just wonder what made that so different, 'cause everybody I talked to 00:15:00says that, you know, "I loved the mill, I loved -- it was fun."

MCCOY: Well, we treated people like they were supposed to be treated, like they wanted to be treated.

F1: But now people look at the mill and they think the job would just, you know, treated badly, that you were --

MCCOY: Well, that's --

F1: -- used and, and paid next to nothing.

MCCOY: That's this younger generation. It's not old people that used to work there. I'm 70 -- I'll be 79 in August -- on August the third. And if the mill had still been running, I'd-a still been working.

F1: Mm.

MCCOY: 'Cause I had a department that I went off and bought, put in, and nobody know too much about it. Electricians come out there to see something about some of my spoolers, or winders or something, they come and ask me what was wrong. They wouldn't hunt it up.

F1: Mm-hmm. (whispering) Well, what about, um -- I guess you've seen all the changes that have gone around in the neighborhood. Gone on.

MCCOY: Oh, yeah.

F1: What do you think about that?

MCCOY: Well, I think it was great. I wish they would-a done that long years ago. It's good for people here -- 'round here now.

F1: Yeah. We're getting it, getting it back to looking good like it used to.

MCCOY: That's right. Looking much better around here.

F1: Well, during the Depression, Horace Carson used to talk about bootlegging, to, to feed his family. Do you remember any of that stuff that was going on?

MCCOY: Well, I know he was bootlegging.

F1: (laughs)

MCCOY: (laughs) There was a lot of bootleggers around here.

F1: Yeah. Did the mill try to curb it or do anything about it?

MCCOY: Well, it wasn't none of their business.

F1: (laughs) So, they stayed out of it?

MCCOY: Stayed out of it. That's my opinion of it.

F1: Yeah. I know --

MCCOY: I know I wouldn't allow nobody to come in on my job drinking. Because I was afraid that, uh, they would get hurt. I never, I never really fired but two 00:17:00people. In other words, I didn't fire them, they fired their selves. Laying out, for stretch of times, without even calling in or anything or one come in drunk on the job, second time. And sent him home the first time. Told him to come back when he got sober. And the next time, he come in there drunk, why, I told him that that was all of it. I didn't need him no more. 'Cause I didn't want him to get his hand cut off or something. Kind of like the guy out at Exposition. He opened up an end of a frame one time and was cleaning and oiling it, and he got his hand caught in there, and cut off some of his fingers. The safety committee come around and he took them to show them what's done, cut off some fingers on the other hand.

F1: Oh my goodness.

MCCOY: (laughs)

F1: That's amazing. So, do you know -- did anybody ever really get hurt?

MCCOY: Well, they -- I had 2,700 days in my department without an accident.

F1: Mm, mm. Did y'all give bonuses and things for people, you know, for safety? Um...

MCCOY: Well --

F1: It seems like I remember --

MCCOY: We had a good housekeeping bunch and, uh, we always gave a big supper, something like that, to the good departments. For safety. And we had housekeeping every month. And all the supervisors and superintendents all would get together and we would go around the whole mill and if we saw anything that looked like an accident or anything like that could happen, well, we corrected it. We put in a shop for the order to -- them to get up and correct whatever could cause trouble.

F1: (whispering) Yeah, maybe you could straighten something out for me because I -- the company store. Was there regular company store?

MCCOY: There used to be a Roger store right out there, and we issued little books, like $5.00 -- $2.00, $5.00 and $10.00 coupon books. They take it, go out there to office any time and get it if they worked there. And they take it out on their paycheck at the end of the week.

F1: OK, but that -- so [inaudible] just had an agreement with the Roger's --

MCCOY: That's right.

F1: -- to do that. There was never a regular --

MCCOY: Never was a real store.

F1: 'Cause I had heard --

MCCOY: That belonged to Fulton Bag. It was Roger's, it was on that corner where the cabbage patch is, right there.

F1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, yeah, I used to sell Girl Scout cookies there.

MCCOY: Well. I give you lots of bananas and things. You remember that?

F1: I love it.

MCCOY: I be buying off the little peddlers.

F1: I do remember.

MCCOY: You kids would be around. I bought many a thing and handed it to these kids.

F1: Yeah, yeah, I do remember that.

MCCOY: Yeah, I had six children here. I lived on Fulton Terrace. And Memorial Drive, down there at the Ball diamond during that time. My oldest son is 52 years old and my youngest son is 39. I had three boys and three girls.

F1: Now, you played on the, on the baseball team for the mill.

MCCOY: No, I was the official scorer and whatever where they went. And, uh, we, we had a good ball club at 1939. We went to Washington D.C. and stayed in a tournament, national tournament, to the last game. Umpires took it away from us.

F1: Oh no.

MCCOY: And in 1941, we won a state championship again, and went to Youngstown, Ohio, and we stayed five days up there.

F1: Mm-hmm. Well, my uncle was a pitcher, do you remember him? Lefty?

MCCOY: Oh, I certainly do.

F1: (laughs)

MCCOY: Ruined his arm out here at [inaudible], one cold day, it was snowing.

F1: Mm-hmm. 'Cause a number of people used to tell me that he could have been in the majors --

MCCOY: He could have been in the Major League.

F1: But he threw his arm out. (whispering) Um, you lived on Fulton Terrace, 00:21:00what's -- was that part of -- the mill owned that, too?

MCCOY: Yep.

F1: Well, do you remember, was it Lonny that used to clean up?

MCCOY: Colored man? Yeah, and uh, Davis was our plumber that went around and cleaned up -- and got all the plumbing done in the houses and I forget now who the carpenter was.

F1: But they kept it up, didn't they?

MCCOY: Oh, they kept up everything. It didn't cost the people a thing, all they had to do was go out there and report it to the office. If any -- got -- thing wrong with the plumbing, or anything got wrong with the woodwork or anything, they had men that they had hired to do all that work.

F1: Mm-hmm. I remember, in the wintertime, they used to -- if it was gonna freeze that night -- they'd blow the whistle 10 minutes before they were gonna cut the water out there by the -- you know, draw water and then they'd cut the water off 'til the next morning. Mm. What about black people in the mill?

MCCOY: We hired black people. I had them -- I had a lot of them hired. But, uh, in the spool room -- I was running the spool room and, uh, the only trouble I ever had with them, was, um, one Saturday afternoon, I was behind the spinning room, and I asked the whole second shift to come in at three -- we, we were on the first shift all day, and the second shift came in and I was gonna work them all day, 'til 11 o'clock that night. For eight hours. And I had taught, uh, black person to be my fixer and my supervisor on the second shift. And he had a 00:23:00whole second shift of black -- but two people. I had two white ladies there. And, uh, I was at home, about -- it was at seven o'clock at night, the guards call me and says, "Mr. McCoy, my understanding was that, uh, you was gonna run your second shift 'til 11 o'clock?" I said, "That's right." He says, "Well, they've all walked out, except the two white ladies, and they're standing here, wanting to know what you've got to say about it." I said, "You tell them to go hom e, and I'll talk to them Monday." So, when I came in Monday, well, I was still a little bit behind there, and, uh, I called my boss, Mr. Duckett and Mr. Watson, and told them what happened. And Mr. Watson said, "Well, what are you gonna do?" I said, "Well, I'll tell ya. I hadn't got nothing else for those people to do except the two white ladies, 00:24:00and I'm bringing them on in the first shift." He says, "Why?" I says, "Well, they didn't want to go out." And I said, "All the black closed my job down at seven o'clock. I'm shutting the second shift down until tomorrow. And I'm gonna bring the third shift up on it and by the weekend, I'll have enough people hired to run the third shift again. So, when the second shift came in, I told them, "I told the first shift to shut down all the machineries, three o'clock." They want to know why I shut it down, I said, "Well, y'all shut it down Saturday night, at seven, when you were supposed to work 'til 11, and I don't need none of you no more." So they said, "We'll go to the labor board." I says, "Good, that's the thing to do." So, I went ahead and reported it to the labor board, what had happened, and when they went to the labor board, I never did have to go, 'cause they said that the people run themselves off. I didn't run them off.

F1: Mm.

GEORGE STONEY: That was much later, wasn't it? When was it -- what was the 00:25:00date of that?

MCCOY: Well, really, I don't quite remember, but it was, it was several years before the mill shut down. That's all I can tell you. Because I don't remember exact date. But the labor board, the labor board wouldn't recognize them at all 'cause our personnel director went up there and reported all of it, what they had done, and we had to prove -- because all of the -- all of them had paces to go out at seven o'clock. That this here black supervisor had gave them. And he went out, too. And my understanding, that -- from about th-- four o'clock, after I left there at three -- after about four o'clock there, some of them got to drinking, and that, that caused it all, so, really and truly, I didn't need them people anymore.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about blacks in the mills in the early '30s?

MCCOY: Oh, good people. I just as soon had black -- some of the black and some of the white in there, because they worked, and I had no trouble getting my job run with some of them.

GEORGE STONEY: What did they do in the mill in the '30s?

MCCOY: Well, we taught them to run machinery. Just like the other people, and uh, some of them, uh, run, uh, day jobs and -- like I said, some of them were piece workers, just like everybody else. We didn't show no partiality between the black and the white. And you take all the shop people, all the black out, they were just crazy about some of us supervisors. 'Cause we treated them, when they come in our department to do something, we treated them just like it was a white man coming in there to do it.

GEORGE STONEY: That was singularly very unusual because most of the time, I hear that there are no blacks in the union until -- I mean, no blacks in the mill, until the '60s. You're saying, even when you're in the early '30s, there 00:27:00were blacks.

MCCOY: Well, I had, I had one woman working for me, in the spool room, and in the twine room, that lady worked for me darn near as long as I worked up there. Maddie Belle was her name. And she was just as good a worker as I ever had.

GEORGE STONEY: Were there any objections from the white people?

LEROY: No, they got along with the white people. There was nothing wrong with the way we treated black people up there. They made as much money as anybody else did up there.

GEORGE STONEY: Where did they live?

MCCOY: Huh?

F1: Where did they live?

MCCOY: Well, most of them lived, uh, across the railroad, up there. Back in black town. Everybody knows they used to -- until the '60s, they didn't hang around here at night. Everybody knows that. They stayed on the other side of the railroad. That, that was their own, uh, prerogative, to stay over there. We 00:28:00didn't tell them to stay over there, I just -- they just know not to come down here and mess with people.

F1: Cabbage Town had a…

MCCOY: Y'all want to know how Cabbage Town got that name?

F1: Yeah, tell us.

MCCOY: All right. There was a truckload of cabbage coming down through here, and it turned over, right there. And that night, you couldn't smell nothing but cabbage in this town. Because everybody (laughs) cooked cabbage that afternoon. (laughs)

F1: Did the man give it to us or did we steal it?

MCCOY: He told us just to go out there and pick it up. He says, "I ain't gonna haul it off, so, it's good cabbage, go get it." And everybody went and got it. (laughs)

GEORGE STONEY: OK, now, we lost, uh, and I'm gonna ask ya to repeat that story about the cabbage. Outside, where he can show where it happened.

F1: Oh, good.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, right here? (squeaking, chatter) Go outside and you can show us wh--