Highland Reunion Interview 1

 JAMIE STONEY: Two by four and a few nails would help.

F1: All of it's interesting though.

M1: (inaudible)

FOOTS WEAVER: Let's see you run a little bit. Dag gone it, you used to run around.

LUCILLE THORNBURGH: Yeah, I ain't running like that no more. Are you?

WEAVER: Lucille, how you been doing?

THORNBURGH: Oh I've been doing fine. How have you been doing?

WEAVER: You combed your hair and it's poking out of your head dag gone you.

THORNBURGH: Well you just look like you always did only fifty years older.

WEAVER: Well about 75 years older.

THORNBURGH: Older, a little bit older, yeah.

WEAVER: 84.

THORNBURGH: Is that all?

WEAVER: That's all. You're older than I am.

THORNBURGH: No, no I'm not.

WEAVER: You're younger. I got it right, I got it right that time.

THORNBURGH: Yes you did.

WEAVER: I remember the first time I ever seen you Lucille. Remember that awful truck and they stole my lunch and I went in there and they was all mad about stealing lunches. And I was a [inaudible], now I was a [inaudible]. Now you remember --

THORNBURGH: I remember when you was a [inaudible], yeah.

WEAVER: You remember Camp Walton?

THORNBURGH: Oh yeah, sure.

WEAVER: And he went to Standard Mill out there.

THORNBURGH: Yeah.

WEAVER: And I went over there to Standard. I followed him. Camp was a pretty nice guy. And [inaudible] got him in my nose and it was making me sick. I couldn't hardly breathe.

THORNBURGH: Uh-huh, so you quit.

WEAVER: You looking good Lucille, I swear.

THORNBURGH: Well thank you, thank you.

WEAVER: You feel like pulling another strike?

THORNBURGH: Yeah.

WEAVER: Yeah.

THORNBURGH: I think if I was working like that I would, wouldn't you.

WEAVER: Yeah.

THORNBURGH: We worked hard there.

WEAVER: You know this gentleman here don't you.

THORNBURGH: I think I know him.

F2: You heard of him, didn't you -- haven't you. You have, you took care of yourself good.

THORNBURGH: Well thank you, I didn't think I had.

WEAVER: She's been all over the blame country. She's the one that started this co-op. Didn't you Lucille, remember them little co-ops.

THORNBURGH: Oh I had forgotten about the co-ops.

WEAVER: Yeah, I was up there at Northwood. And I went out there to see about a job and [inaudible] me to pull it up and they was around there that morning when I went in. I guess there was 500 people there looking for jobs. And I said, "I ain't got time to mess with that." I was about to go make a dime someplace to get me a side of bacon.

THORNBURGH: Right, and you didn't have to. Did you work at Norris, did you work there for a while?

WEAVER: Where was that?

THORNBURGH: At Norris?

WEAVER: No, no, I never did get a job when they did that government stuff except I went to Memphis down there.

THORNBURGH: Some of the strikers at Cherokee did go out there and get jobs as laborers and, you know, on Norris Dam. When they was building Norris Dam.

WEAVER: Yeah, well I went in a partner with him Lucille.

THORNBURGH: Oh did you?

WEAVER: Yeah, I was a local in '50 out there on -- what's the name of that street where all of us was at? I don't know. Hall was upstairs. That wasn't Lamar Street, there between Maple and you know --

THORNBURGH: Yeah, that's right Lamar.

WEAVER: Yeah, Lamar. Well you was in the paper business there, you was writing for the paper.

THORNBURGH: That's right, that's right.

WEAVER: And I was there every Friday night upstairs. I was trying to get together -- what I was trying to do is get them to eliminate -- to get these homebuilders in the union and get them a dollar an hour and we'd make a dollar twelve and a half cents. I was going to ask them to just cut twelve and a half cents and let them come on in the union to get them in there. Well I couldn't make that move.

THORNBURGH: They wouldn't do it.

WEAVER: No, I was waiting on the construction the whole time. (inaudible)

THORNBURGH: You would have, I thought I'd aged a little bit Foots.

WEAVER: No, you haven't. You just got blonde hair now.

THORNBURGH: Yeah, my hair did turn blonde.

WEAVER: She had to use to set that blonde -- they don't get gray hair no more. 00:04:00I know you're a brunette. OK, we can go on in. I told her -- I told her I hadn't seen her in 58 years.

GEORGE STONEY: Really?

WEAVER: That's right. Her eyes ain't changed a bit.

GEORGE STONEY: You're fine, you're fine.

F2: OK, because I'll lean up so he can hear me better.

JAMIE STONEY: You're fine. Roll it. OK, go.

WEAVER: I had some property right there close to Hanson up there. I moved to Cherokee Cotton Mill up there.

THORNBURGH: Did you sell it Foots?

WEAVER: Do what?

THORNBURGH: Did you sell it?

WEAVER: I sold. Bob Williams's daughter bought a house all behind them up there, blocked my road in there. I was about to have a lawsuit with him and he come cross a bridge up there, up above.

M4: OK, cut in please.

F2: OK. Foots, we're going to start now. Do you remember this girl with flashing eyes.

WEAVER: Flashing eyes, leader strike -- that couldn't be Miss Thornburgh by any means, could it Lucille?

THORNBURGH: It could be.

WEAVER: She was sort of a beautiful woman there. Don't tell her none because she didn't think that back then, but she was. She was beautiful.

F2: Was she a firebrand?

WEAVER: Yeah -- no, Lucille always has been a good girl. She always has been and she'll die that way.

THORNBURGH: Good girl, I like that. Good girl.

WEAVER: Well she was a good girl. You had good company. You kept good company Lucille and you kept your nose clean.

THORNBURGH: Yeah, well I don't think the Cherokee management thought I was such a good girl. Do you?

WEAVER: Well I know they didn't down there now, but you were on your rights down there and I was on my rights and everybody else had their own rights. And 00:06:00that's the reason why -- that's the reason why that I think that I'm not trying to run anybody else's business, but I'd like for them to see my point of view. They'd make more money under a union label than they would out there in open shop. Now that's what I would like to see. But there's some people that don't even want to see it you way, and don't fall out with them, be honest with them, just say that's what I believe and that's what I think. And I just hope you all the luck there in the world.

THORNBURGH: But they don't look at it that way.

WEAVER: No, no, there's two sides to everything Lucille. And there's a bad side and a good side. And I think we've been on the good side.

F2: Let me ask you a question, all three of you. When you started your union, how did you go about doing that? I mean I worked with the union and I know how hard it is even now or ten years ago to start a union in a cotton mill, that's one of the hardest places to organize that you can find. But you had a good 00:07:00union. Tell me y'all got your union started.

THORNBURGH: When we first started there, none of us, of course, knew anything about a union. But I think we used fairly good judgment in the way that we organized it because we had us a leader and where we could have a committee in each department. See there wasn't time. I was a winding machine operator and I didn't have any time to go back in the spinning room and talk to the people back there or to the card room, the weave shop, or any of those places. So you had to have a person that was working in that department to do the organizing in there. And that's the way we got them. You know we had several of those weavers from North Carolina and they helped us a lot. But you couldn't -- well you've been in the mills, you know that you couldn't leave your machine when you were working on piece work. You can't leave your machine to go talk to somebody about joining the union. So it had to be after work, on the lunch 00:08:00break, or doing it by department. So we did it by department really.

F2: How long did it take you to get your union started?

THORNBURGH: Oh we weren't more than --

WEAVER: Five weeks.

THORNBURGH: Yeah, five weeks, yeah, five weeks we had it going.

WEAVER: In five weeks we had -- we had -- we had 80% of them in five weeks.

THORNBURGH: We sure did.

WEAVER: Yeah, we had 80% of them. I think that was darn good. As I say, we didn't have a chance inside, but I was making it a point to visit the people at night.

THORNBURGH: Yeah, we had those night committees that went around at night.

F2: What did the night committees do?

WEAVER: We done a lot of talking there at the night and you get acquainted with the family.

THORNBURGH: Went to their homes.

WEAVER: That's the -- that's the backbone of the whole thing, daddy's union and if he's got kids. I like to call daddy a union man. Hey and it's proud too to be called a union man.

HOMER COLEMAN: Well Foots don't you think that organizing went on in the restroom?

WEAVER: Well part of it did. Yes, part of it.

COLEMAN: What we did in there, we'd be sitting on those sinks.

WEAVER: A part of it did go around the restroom up there. And there was some smoking going on up there too.

COLEMAN: That was all the time really that we could get anybody together because everybody was on their job.

WEAVER: But at home was the best place I found to write somebody up, right in their own home between the man and his wife and the children. And you can sit and talk to the whole family that way and explain to them and answer kids' questions because kids are anxious to learn. If you know anything at all, put that kid right out there on the floor and let him learn. And let him learn the truth about it.

F2: Well Lucille with 450 to 500 people in the plant and you organized that plant in five weeks, were people so unhappy that it was not hard or did you have 00:10:00to do a lot of talking.

THORNBURGH: I don't remember, and I'm sure you don't either Foots, that we did had to do so very much talking to them. See, then we weren't talking about any holidays or pensions or sick leave or insurance or any kind of benefits. All we were talking about was hours, wages, and working conditions. That's all. And when you talk to people and you tell them that if we had a union, we're going to get better wages. Maybe we can get shorter hours. We weren't thinking about that at the time though until NRA that we couldn't get. But, no it wasn't hard to sell them. You're just taking a pay envelope of eight dollars and forty cents a week. Well it wasn't so hard to talk to people then about.

F2: Weren't people scared of getting fired?

WEAVER: They didn't have anything to start with there. They didn't have enough --

THORNBURGH: Some of them were afraid but as we organized them by departments -- well some of them who didn't -- who really didn't know for certain what was going on, they'd say, "Well this girl over there at that machine, she joined, I'll join too."

GEORGE STONEY: Now, we understand you want to question about southern people being offended here.

WEAVER: Lucille did you -- did you -- I believe you did on the second strike. Now we had three strikes down there. Do your remember that? The weave room come out first so you was lone ranger out there. The next trip, the spinning room and the card room come out. And the next trip was a nationwide strike.

THORNBURGH: Yours were unorganized strikes. They was wildcats.

WEAVER: Yeah. And you know we voted there. We didn't want to strike on that nationwide. We didn't agree with it. We didn't agree with it at all and it was an uncalled for strike. I don't know why they done it for. But he was a leader there and we followed the leader and that was the thing for us to do. We 00:12:00thought that the majority ruled.

GEORGE STONEY: How did you feel about that Lucille?

THORNBURGH: Uh, I think the strike, uh, was very untimely. Now you know Foots, we were going along there, we had good meetings -- you remember Lula Ogle? Lula Ogle and I had worked a long time to pull a contract together and we were in the stages of negotiating a contract. At that time, there were 600 employees, so it came out in a lawsuit. There was 600 employees there and we had 600 members. We had them all signed up. We were having good meetings and we was working on the contract. And when national union called us out on strike, we were unprepared and I think it was a very bad thing to call it at that time.

WEAVER: It was a bad time and you said a mouthful there. It was a bad time, a real bad time. And because we was young there, we was still on the bottom. We 00:13:00was bottle babies there. And we had something to work with a showing there, we'd come up there and we had a family going there. And we was all getting in our meeting with one accord. And we was union 100%. Lucille said, 100% we was union.

GEORGE STONEY: Coleman, now you were a young man at the time. Tell them about the way you felt because you were just a kid then about.

COLEMAN: Well we started organizing or to be able to get organized. And the best I remember. We been in the restroom because we had a big restroom. Sinks, that's the only place we had to wash our hands or whatever. And sometimes it'd be 25 people in there. And that's the only time that everybody would be talking and that's the only time that I remember -- of course nobody ever said 00:14:00anything to me about not signing up to be a union member because our bosses didn't pay attention to it in the weave shops because what we did -- they didn't know anything about it. They didn't want to know I don't think.

F2: Well how did you feel about the strike? What made you walk out?

COLEMAN: I went out because everybody else did because I walked out, left my job, just like the older people did because I thought they knew because they were guiding us, the younger --

F2: And you had that much faith in the union? Were you a union man?

COLEMAN: I didn't know that much about a union. My dad had been a union man all my life I guess. But he didn't never discuss his work when he'd come home. So I don't know really much about the union period. But back then everybody wanted more money.

GEORGE STONEY: Ask about the question about we understand that a lot of southern 00:15:00people supposedly didn't care about union and yet you got all these people walking.

F2: Right. The amazing thing to me is that you had 100% organized. And that's hard to do even today. That's been hard to do ever since I've ever known anything about unions in the south. Southern people are afraid of unions. They don't know anything about unions. They hear a lot of things about how the union will make the plant close down. How are you able to get that infant union, that bottle baby of yours, up to 100%?

THORNBURGH: Just by talking and as he says, you did yours in the restroom. We did a lot of it around the water fountain.

COLEMAN: Yeah, but in your department it was much different from ours because I have known your boss for many years and I never did like him to period, from the time I was -- he had fired me the first time. But in the weave shop I don't think any of us had anything to worry about because if we got more money, they 00:16:00got more money. And our bosses, they'd come from Knoxville. They'd come from a New England states.

F2: You didn't think you'd be fired for walking out?

COLEMAN: No, that never come to mind.

F2: Do you think a lot of the people that walked out on that strike were not scared of being fired?

COLEMAN: I think the biggest thing that the people that went back was worried that they would lose their home or they couldn't feed their kids or something. Of course I didn't have any. I had a wife, but I had a brother-in-law that's at the grocery store and I knew that I could make enough money to get by on I guess because when I went in the union I was supposed to go by the rules. And that's what I was doing. And that's what I did there.

F2: You were following the leadership?

THORNBURGH: But you were asking there if they were afraid to join the union. I think they thought, we must've been better organizers than we thought we were. You know, when we really explained to them that if they joined the union they'd get better wages, working conditions, and possibly shorter hours. All right, we sold them on that and when they came out on strike, they were certain we were going to win, we all were. I thought we would win. See none of us were educated union-wise by any means. We were the most ignorant group of people, I guess, that ever come out that didn't know anything about unions at all. And we thought we were going to win. We were just certain that we were going to win that strike because that's what the national office had told us, that if everybody comes out, we'll close the mills down and we're going to win this strike. And we thought we'd win it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, how did that information get to you from the national office, tell her.

THORNBURGH: Oh how did we get the information?

WEAVER: Lucille wrote a letter to the Manton police.

THORNBURGH: We got letters every day and they sent us flowers of all kinds and we'd hear stories from them about how they were winning in other places and how we could win.

F2: Did you go to a convention where [Gorman?] talked to you about the strategy of the strike?

THORNBURGH: Oh yeah, Mm-hmm.

F2: What did he tell you about the strategy?

THORNBURGH: Oh he told us -- he gave us little -- we got leaflets at that one, how we must be very careful that we didn't do anything that was illegal. I think there was a few little illegalities went on, don't you?

WEAVER: Well they was some deals, I didn't like some deals. And there was some other stuff going on inside there that was carried back at the barge, what I call ratting on them. And they had -- I had them marked pretty well and who it was and I hauled them. And they would rat right back to the pacer. Now the pacer 00:19:00was somebody else besides John Keele and Frank Keele and old man Keele. There was three of them there, the boy and their daddies, two boys and a daddy. Well they was from the east. They was from Massachusetts up there. And I had their history pretty good and they was union people. They come out of the union country up there. Massachusetts was the biggest part of it, how it was a union up there. I guess you realize that. But the best place I found out was in the home to organize. That's the best place because I go talking direct to the people.

F2: Did President Roosevelt and what he was saying about unions help you organize?

WEAVER: Well we had pressure there that we had them ratting on us and carrying this stuff on the inside what we was doing.

F2: What about FDR? Did he help you and your organizing?

WEAVER: Who?

F2: FDR, Franklin Roosevelt.

WEAVER: Yes, he encouraged our some. Yeah, he did.

F2: Do you think that made a difference to the people.

WEAVER: Well it did make part of the difference there, yeah.

THORNBURGH: Oh Foots, it made a big difference because the people through here because TVA was coming in and the whole structure I suppose you could say of the United States was changing. And the people here had all confidence in Roosevelt. If President Roosevelt's for this, we are too. And remember how he used to have his fireside chats and we'd get around the radio not to miss a one of the fireside chats. But those people who are coming out on -- you were asking about those people coming out on strike. Even those little ratty ones that you were talking about, when we called strike, they didn't stay in. They were afraid not to come out with us.

WEAVER: They was afraid not to come out because we was a little rough now and I guess old fuss was he had his temper up there. He could raise his temper up a little bad back then.

F2: Now some of the newspaper accounts say that on the first day of the strike you had a handful of pickets and the night shift didn't work. But there wasn't a real big showing. The second day of the strike, it got bigger. By the fifth day, they had the police and injunction out. How did your strike grow like that?

WEAVER: Well we was there on the picket line. We had people on the picket line. And as I say, we -- we -- hired a constable down there or they'd hired a constable, we didn't mind. But we elected him. We elected that constable and he was a backbone up inside about $50 a week was what he was making. I guess you remember that don't you Lucille. Yeah, $50 a week. Now that was selling his 00:22:00neighbors out there to help him get elected on his job and that's the kind of rats that I didn't like.

GEORGE STONEY: Ask about the climate there, the political.

WEAVER: Yeah, I mean that was the kind of people I didn't like. Now I didn't say they was ratting on us, that's well should've been if they was ratting on us, taking us back in the barge to the cleaners.

F2: Homer, did anybody think you were being led by communists? Or what was the atmosphere in the community, in the newspapers at the time of the strike.

COLEMAN: I think newspaper people kind of nuts when they started talking about the people of Tennessee, especially east Tennessee being a communist because if we thought there was a communist around us, he wouldn't last long because --

THORNBURGH: We didn't know either.

COLEMAN: I think -- that's one reason -- I guess there are so many people, they have their own mind, their own judgment. And they used it because when they 00:23:00began to go back as far as communism, that would have never happened in Cherokee Mill because we were all too close knit because -- on our shift, in the weave shop, we were like family because we'd tell jokes and we'd run off and leave our looms and tell somebody a joke and run back and have to start up three or four looms because it'd stop off. But --

F2: Everybody sort of grew up together. Did you live around each other?

COLEMAN: Well no, but we grew together on the job I think because when you talked to -- one, you'd have to stand face them because the lubes were making so much noise. You had to face them up and you don't work an all-night, 11 hours. You had to do something besides work. You had to have laugh and joke a little bit and I know I used to when I first started at the mill as a young 00:24:00fellow, I used to go in her department. I was about 16 years old. And I'd always kid and tease the girls. I'd have to go by their winders to do what I was doing. But the other guys at the wheat shop couldn't do that. But it would pass the time off when you could talk and laugh with your fellow workers. And I think that was the reason we were all so close.

GEORGE STONEY: Lucille, talk about this business -- because the papers were full of communist accusations at that time.

THORNBURGH: Oh they were.

GEORGE STONEY: Just mention the papers were. No, Lucille.

THORNBURGH: Talking about -- it was in the papers all the time. And this place, and particularly Highlander, you know, oh Highlander was written up all the time as being communist. But our people didn't -- they might've wondered what it was, but they didn't worry much about it. Of course, the papers accused me of being a communist. And I don't know. And I think back at it now, maybe I was 00:25:00because I certainly didn't know what a communist was. You know, we hadn't -- nobody had talked about that. And you must remember that we were so uneducated at that time and we were so tied up in our strike that we didn't -- the communism thing didn't scare us much. We just didn't pay any attention to it. We were so wrapped up in what we were doing that we didn't.

F2: What about the reports that were in the papers at the time about violence in Honey Path, South Carolina and in the other towns around with this same strike. Do -- did you feel like that scared people? Did that set an atmosphere in the community and the businesses that you were betraying the country?

THORNBURGH: Oh it would come out in the paper and of course one thing too -- I bet you all both remember this, the churches were against us. Now that was a bigger threat to us than communism or anything else that could come down the 00:26:00road because the preachers, particularly in the smaller churches -- I don't whether they did in -- well I think they did all around -- were talking about what terrible people we were. You remember that Foots how the churches were against --

WEAVER: I remembered something along that line Lucille. But as far as communists is concerned, if I wanted to fight somebody, I'd start propogandering and it'd be a lie and you get that lie started out there and then you got some people and you got them on both sides. You got a propaganda lie going there that they know communist no place in the country. Just because they had a co-op out there, it didn't make it communist out there. It was a co-op. They sort of split up there to get stuff cheaper done so they could afford it by and large like that. But now that's where your communists started from, right out there at Norris Dam because they had a co-op out there.

THORNBURGH: And at Highlander.

WEAVER: Yeah, that's exactly where it started it from. And it's propaganda. That's what they wanted. They wanted propaganda there to fight with. And as I said before, I think I said yesterday, you don't have to try to explain to a friend -- don't try to explain to anything, he wouldn't believe you know anything. A friend will understand.

GEORGE STONEY: Lucille, could you tell us about this place where we're meeting?

THORNBURGH: About Highlander?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. Tell these gentlemen because they don't really know the place.

THORNBURGH: Oh well I won't give them the whole history of it. [Inaudible] would do that better than I do. But it started, you know, in 1932 at Monteagle, Tennessee by Miles Horton and a couple of other people. And during our strike, Miles came to town. He came to Knoxville to do some educational work with us. And he did, what little he could do, the few people he could get to come. But by 00:28:00that time everything had started in the newspapers about Highlander being communistic and the people didn't want to have anything to do with Highlander. And to show you how long those stories about Highlander being communist went on, I was on the Highlander board in 19 -- about 1952 to about 1958. And I was working for the Central Labor Council in Knoxville. And I had to get off the Highlander board because at that time I couldn't afford to quit my job and I couldn't afford to -- well I couldn't afford to be -- you see, I couldn't get -- I was a blacklisted textile worker. I couldn't get a job just anywhere. And I had a job there in the labor movement with the newspaper and I needed to keep that job. So I got off that board and was off of it until after I semi-retired.

F2: How did Highlander help you develop –-