Foots Weaver, C.R. Weaver, and Sue Dunlap Interview

GEORGE STONEY: Rev it up first.

JAMIE STONEY: Ok, kill tone. Kill tone. Ready, rolling.

GEORGE STONEY: Alright sir.

FOOTS WEAVER: All right. Now what we started on there, you wanted to know that I thought people that went out on strike was abused from the foremans. And I said no, it wasn't abuse from the foremans, it was on the cut, the 40% cut. Now, ah, on the union part about George, he went in the union and they told him, they said, "Everything is 100% union now. I want you to understand that, George." He said, "Okay." And George was gone two hours one day and the 00:01:00foreman asked him, said, "Where in the devil you been, George?" He says, "I went down to the union depot." Said, "Down there because I had to take a crap."

GEORGE STONEY: Are you proud of what you did with the union?

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah. I am proud, proud of everything I done under the union. I -- I've been -- been blackballed, but it didn't hurt me. It helped me.

GEORGE STONYE: Why?

FOOTS WEAVER: It just made a better man out of me. I think, ah, I've lived a pretty good life. I think every one of my kids thinks a lot of me. I believe that, you know. I believe they'd do anything in the world they could for me,

GEORGE STONEY: Now say--

FOOTS WEAVER: -- but they know more about me than I know about myself.

GEORGE STONEY: Now during that strike when you weren't getting any money in, what'd you do about your family and what did other people do about their families?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, if ye' going to starve somebody to death, don't never starve a cotton mill guy to death because he's eat enough lint to where he can stay fat for the rest of his life on that lint. You can't starve one of 'em to death.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you have a garden and that kind of stuff?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, yes, I tried -- tried it. And out there to Willow Springs, out there -- I had a pretty good garden out there. I had an old nag. I'm not talking 'bout my wife, now -- I'm talking 'bout my horse -- and I bought him on credit and then turned around when the crop was made and sold it back, sold it to another feller for more than I had in it after I's working all summer. And he took the payment over to pay for the horse.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, lets hold it just a minute, you're picking up that?

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: Speed.

GEORGE STONEY: Hold it just a minute Jamie.

HELFAND: And represented streght and what happened after that?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, when we walked out down there, we didn't have no union -- out of the weave room. That's the strike that I started down there. I take responsibility for that. I don't think some of 'em don't like me and never will like me as long as they live probably. Some of 'em's gone. Some of the old, old people down there at Cherokee Cotton Mill's done been gone for years, but I hope I meet 'em in a happier home than what that was down there. I hope so. And I'm still a friend and I was a friend when I left down there. I tried to be just friendly as I could with 'em. I come in contact with 'em again 15-20 years 00:04:00ago, and it was the same bunch still pulling the same things, only in a different way, of taking property and closing it up to where I could get through to my part of the property. Closed the county road up.

HELFAND: Okay. Now let's go back. Can you stop?

[break in video]

HELFAND: If that's true and that's what you've been telling me, I want you to say it.

FOOTS WEAVER: On the union, the reason why that I say, and I'll say it as long as I live, the more you got in the union or more you got in anything, the stronger you are. The more people you got a-fighting out there on the front line, the stronger you are. And if you want something strong, always have it 110 proof. Yeah.

JUDITH HELFAND: So what did that first strike do for everybody else? What did that represent for the other workers?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, you know, I talked -- I talked to all of 'em. I talked to Jimmy Monroe. I guess you've got his name down someplace, Jimmy Monroe. I talked to him and I talked to Bell Jones and I talked to Austin Jones. I guess you've got their names down, too. And Jessie Brown, Jessie Brown, he come back in. He helped break the strike, Jessie Brown did. Oscar Mahan helped break the strike. He come back in. Well, I -- I'd talked to these other boys and Sam James, a big old tall fella there, I talked to him, too. He was a fixer, a loom fixer and a good guy with it. And Sam's dead and gone and I talked to Sam there. Sam was easy to get along with and he'as agreeable. Whatever suited me 00:06:00suited Sam. That is, we could discuss a lot of things. Sometimes we'd change it around a little bit to where (inaudible) and grieve with each other. And if you can't bargain with anybody, you can't deal with 'em.

HELFAND: Mmm-hmm. I'm gonna ask you one more time, repeat after me, "It represented strength to everybody," and then tell me what happened.

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, it did represent strength --

HELFAND: Ok. Start with that first strike, the wildcat strike in '33 represented strength and take it away and tell me what happened.

FOOTS WEAVER: -- because that first strike that we pulled down there strengthened the whole body down there. They seen that we got more money, and that's what we was working after, more money. And that strengthened the whole mill. That took all of 'em, ever one of 'em.

HELFAND: And the you stared-- And then you got a charter?

FOOTS WEAVER: Right.

HELFAND: Okay. So keep on going.

FOOTS WEAVER: We went right on -- we went right on day after day, night after 00:07:00night organizing down there at Cherokee Cotton Mill and when we come out of there, we had around 80-85% and we had enough to get a charter. We got our charter and then we got built up there with a little money. And then we got broke. It was -- it was sort of sad, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We had a little grocery store up there. We had a little grocery story. We had some food. We would get some food outta that grocery store. We got beans and coffee and lard and baking powder and stuff like that. But we wasn't a-getting fat. We was just about holding our own. We had plenty of starch. We had rice, we had macaroni and stuff like that. And then you'd get out and pick some wild greens, too.

HELFAND: This is the commissary that you fed the other union members with?

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

HELFAND: Ok.

GEORGE STONEY: One more thing ask him about the fact tht they didn't have cotton mill villages here made that easier or harder?

HELFAND: The fact that you weren't in cotton mill village while you were organizing, did that make your organizing harder or easier?

FOOTS WEAVER: No. In a cotton mill village -- see, Cherokee didn't have no village. Cherokee didn't have nothing except Cherokee Cotton Mill down there. Well, Brookside Cotton Mill and Standard Knitting Mills, they had villages and when they come out on strike, I don't know if they got any of 'em outta the houses out there or not. They could have, but I don't know. But I know one thing. They had help -- out there at the Holton Knitting Mill, they helped us out there a whole lot.

HELFAND: Have you told your children much about your leadership role in the union?

FOOTS WEAVER: About --

HELFAND: Later on did you tell them? Did you make it public about your role in the union years ago?

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah. What our idea was about the union, our idea was -- and a fellow by the name of Scott -- I learned a lot from Scott about unions. And he was an organizer. And what we had to do was stay on the truthful line about it. We wanted to tell 'em the truth about it. We wanted to tell 'em the hardships about it. We wanted to tell 'em what the benefits about it. See, everything you work for, it's got a little problem someplace along the way and you got to come and go over that problem and get it out of the way and then go on smooth rolling for a while -- until you get another one. Then you got another problem to solve. So that's what we tried to do in the union, is to try to show them 00:10:00that they would have some troubles along the way. And we had some troubles at Cherokee Cotton Mill. It wasn't all smooth rolling down there. It couldn't be all smooth rolling because they'as too many against us down there. The officials were 100% against us.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok?

HELFAND: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok I think that's it Jamie.

JAMIE STONEY: Hang on.

HELFAND: He's just doing a wide.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok let's save the light.

(Crosstalk inaudible)

M1: Let me take the mics off of him and just set it out. Ok this is ambience for the uh, interview that was before this.

FOOTS WEAVER: in (inaudible) New York.

M1: Shh. I need you to be quiet.

HELFAND: Just 30 seconds.

[Silence]

M1: Alright.

[break in video]

(lawnmower in the background)

[Silence]

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Foots, could you tell these people what you did in the mill?

FOOTS WEAVER: What I did in the mill, in the cotton mill? And start 1921?

GEORGE STONEY: Okay.

FOOTS WEAVER: 1921 I went to Brookside Cotton Mill a doffing, hitting like that, yeah. Takin' 'em off, putting 'em on. That's what you call stripping 'em down. And you build 'em back. Ah, I went from there then to Cherokee Cotton 00:14:00Mill. I done the same thing down there for a while, two or three weeks, anyway. And I went to Standard Knitting Mill, up to Appalachian Cotton Mill, Knoxville Spinning Company. I tried 'em all.

GEORGE STONEY: You can ask questions about it please, ok.

C.R. WEAVER: Let him continue and then I'll—

GEORGE STONEY: No you can ask questions right now.

C.R. WEAVER: what knid of questions do you want me to ask?

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, how old were you—

C.R. WEAVER: Oh, oh about his job. Ok.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, yeah.

C.R. WEAVER: How old were you when you started?

FOOTS WEAVER: I was 14 years old when I first started in Brookside Cotton Mill. I went to work in there 1921, February the 7th or 8th. I was just a day or two over 14.

SUE DUNLAP: How many kids did you have when they went on strike, Daddy?

FOOTS WEAVER: I have -- had four -- had two. When the first strike was pulled down there, I had two, Clarence and Kyle, two boys.

DUNLAP: How old were they?

FOOTS WEAVER: They was 3 and 1.

DUNLAP: Well, while the strike was going on, how did you feed 'em?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, I guess from here to there -- little here and a little there.

C.R. WEAVER: You'as picking up carpenter jobs here and there, wasn't you? Remodeling and electrician and --

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, I'd get out and work a day here and a day yonder. Sometimes you'd make a buck, sometimes you didn't make nothing. My job was working for somebody else and if they paid 50 cents down, 50 cents a week, sometimes I couldn't do it and I'd just walk off and leave 'em.

DUNLAP: How'd it feel to know that you were blacklisted, that there was a place somewhere with your name where you couldn't get a job?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, that blacklist was just meaning anything on what we had back then. You didn't have anything, so the blacklist didn't matter. You 00:16:00didn't have anything no way and you wasn't going to inherit no million dollars because poor people like we was.

DUNLAP: How do you feel about it now?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, I don't -- now I feel like I done the most wonderful thing that's ever happened -- to get out of a cotton mill. I don't know why, because I've learnt so many other things. I've learnt about a lot of people. I've run across a lot of people, good people, bad people and some of 'em would take advantage of you and some of 'em will give you everything they've got if they know you need it. And other people hasn't got it to give. And that was our shape back then. So we didn't have anything to give. We didn't have anything to take.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell your father what this might mean to your students.

DUNLAP: Well, what -- you know, I teach history ever so often at school, and I 00:17:00think it's real important to them to know that there are people out there that have fought, like you fought, to make something right now for them, to make it easier for them to go out there and work in a mill or work in an auto factory or work for Kroger, or wherever, that people like you fought and gave up a lot back then so they could have it just a little bit easier right now.

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, it's not what you make. It's what you save. If you make tons of it, if you waste it, it's wasted. You want to save a little bit along the way. When I built up to $10,000 in a checking account, I was in business then. I could order my polish and stuff and pay for it. I could order from (inaudible) Disinfectant in Chicago and pay for it. I could go to Crane Company and get a $1,000, $15,000 and get a car with pipe(?) and pay for it. So I 00:18:00didn't have too much worries there except probably the sales would stop.

DUNLAP: If you--

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, Clarence did you know, did you know any about what your father did?

C.R. WEAVER: No, I had no idea

GEORGE STONEY: Tell your father.

C.R. WEAVER: No, I had no idea that he was a leader in any union organization. Probably at that time, didn't even know he was working at the cotton mill. Of course, I was just four years old at the time.

DUNLAP: As we were growing up, we heard stories about him working in the mill and how there was a strike, but it wasn't until this summer that I realized that his picture was on the front page of the Knoxville paper, that he was one of the ones that organized it.

C.R. WEAVER: No, I had no idea that he was in leadership.

DUNLAP: That wasn't our father we were talking about then. Suddenly it was almost like having a public figure out there, and that everybody knew who he was. We thought he just worked in the mill.

GEORGE STONEY: Want to show the --

DUNLAP: Like right here are the guys on the picket line.

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah, that's my brother right there.

DUNLAP: Right there's our uncle.

C.R. WEAVER: Is it Elmer?

DUNLAP: No.

WEAVER: Cecil.

DUNLAP: It's Uncle Cecil. And then there's Daddy and Lucille Thornburgh down there.

C.R. WEAVER: Now who was Lucille Thornburgh? What was she? One of the leaders or --

FOOTS WEAVER: She was the secretary, she was.

C.R. WEAVER: Secretary of the union?

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah, she was secretary of the union. We elected her secretary of the union. She wrote all the -- everything on corresponding and everything when they negotiated backwards and forwards from the union headquarters to the -- to the hall around there where the members was. She knew exactly what was what and she could get up and explain it. She was a well educated girl, Lucille was. She had a good education. She come from a good family. Thornburgh was a judge here, some of her people. Judge Thornburgh. And she -- she really knew 00:20:00what the strikes was and she knew about these pictures here in the paper.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you read the caption, what it says?

DUNLAP: It says, "Crowds of good-natured pickets are shown patrolling the front of Cherokee Spinning Mills in the above picture. Policeman Bill Whalen, shown to the extreme left in the picture, calmly watching the crowd to see that no violence occurs. Inset is Foots Weaver," right there, "and pretty Miss Lucille Thornburgh, two of the leaders of the Cherokee strikes. Miss Thornburgh was recording secretary of the union, but resigned with the rest of the officers when the members voted down the strike more than a week ago. She refused their offer to re-elect her by acclamation at Monday's meeting. Below," here, "is another view of a group of the strikers at the upper end of the plant. In the right foreground, wearing a white Panama hat, is Cecil Weaver," is our Uncle Cecil, Dad's brother, "brother of Foots Weaver and newly elected president of 00:21:00the Cherokee union."

GEORGE STONEY: Well now, why did they ask them about voting down the strike and then they came out on strike? How did that happen?

C.R. WEAVER: Yeah. How did they vote down the strike and then come down it? What happened to cause you to come out?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, what happened there, what happened there that -- that was called strike there from the headquarters and the national union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. Gorman was the president of it and he had authority to call a strike. We could have voted it down, but it didn't do no good because we didn't have a majority and it takes a majority on anything in the United States to make it legal.

C.R. WEAVER: But he probably didn't even know what was going on down here, did he?

FOOTS WEAVER: Naw, he didn't know what was going on down here. Didn't know -- I don't reckon he was ever down here, but that's not the thing about it. Somebody had to be the head of all of it, had to have somebody to carry on, to 00:22:00be the backbone of it.

C.R. WEAVER: To make the decisions.

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah. And if you haven't got a strong leader, you haven't got nothing. You got a strong leader, you got something to work with. Make sure he's honest. Honesty goes futher than anything. If you're going to be a leader, be honest with 'em. Tell 'em the truth.

DUNLAP: If you were 18 years old today and you were living somewhere in north Georgia right in Severe County and you had to go to work in a cotton mill again, would you join a union?

FOOTS WEAVER: I would --

DUNLAP: Go up there and stand up for a union?

FOOTS WEAVER: I would, yes. I would. If I's 18 years old, I'd make it my career. I'd be an organizer. I think I'd have ability and if I knowed what I know right now, I know I'd have plenty of ability, because that's the thing -- you've got to sell to the people. You've got to sell it to 'em to make 'em understand what this union's all about. If you don't sell it to 'em, it's no 00:23:00good. If you go out there and slip it under the door, it's no good that-away. You got to sell it to 'em, tell 'em an honest deal, and then they know that you've not lied to 'em.

GEORGE STONEY: So tell us about what this might mean to your high school kids, if anything.

DUNLAP: A lot of my high school kids in a rural area, they immediately go out at 18 and go to work at a mill or at a plant. And I think it means a lot to them in a way they don't know about.

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, as I say, if you've got a kid that's liking a year or maybe 25 or 30 hours of finishing college or something or other like that, I'll say it again, that I guess it's wored out, but you put that last three months in on salesmanship to sell what you've learned. On salesmanship, they's no limit to that.

GEORGE STONEY: Well Foots--

FOOTS WEAVER You can learn it, but you got to sell it. If you can't sell it, it's not no good at all. It'll spoil on ye'. It's like produce. Produce'll spoil to ye's if ye' don't turn it over and refrigerate it. So you'd better turn the durned stuff over and look at it to see what it's like on both sides.

GEORGE STONEY: Now you only had a fifth grade education, I believe.

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: And yet how do you feel about all these people getting high school educations and college education? What do you think about all that?

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, I think they ought to have the best education now and it'll be easier to learn anything. You take her. Now she teaches English. Okay. If you got a math teacher over there and you got a reading teacher over there, arithmetic, you got social science over there and each one, that's all the 00:25:00subjects they teach, now, listen, my teachers back, I had ever subject there was in the book from the first to the twelfth, to high school, and she done something with 'em. She knew what she was doing. They called her Miss Penman. Miss Bessie Longbottom was the first teacher I ever had at Ebenezer, two-room school down there. And some of them -- now you take the Bergens right now, they own that Dodge distributorship out there, one of the biggest there are in Knoxville right now. That Bergen girl, she was a movie star. That's one of my friends that was brought up at Ebenezer down there. And you've got -- you've got something down there that you've got today that you ain't got close to back when I was going to school.

GEORGE STONEY: Now what would you say to your children about education in the cotton mill? What I mean is that so many people who worked in the cotton mills 00:26:00said -- tell their children, "I never want to see you in a cotton mill. You've got to have an education."

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, they can make something out of a cotton mill. That's one thing people's got to have. It's like an automobile. You've got to have clothes to wear. If you don't, you'll freeze to death. And they'll get you out here for going nude in Knox County, I know that.

DUNLAP: I think when --

FOOTS WEAVER: If you don't believe it, you read in the paper there where somebody exposed out there and then they'll put you in jail for it.

DUNLAP: I think what we got from him when we were growing up was education was all important. Whatever you did, whatever job you did, you did it the best you could, but I don't think he ever wanted any of us to work as hard as he worked. You know, it's neat for me, you know, knowing that you when you read in fifth grade history or eighth grade history or 11th grade history about scabs and organizers and fair labor, he is a American history. And I think that's kind of neat to know that your father is American history.

GEORGE STONEY: Now we noticed that there's almost no preservation of that. We were over at the Brookside Mills and the mill is just kind of a warehouse. We go to Cherokee and they've turned it into a kind of shopping mall. Is there any attempt around here to save his history, which, after all, is your family's history?

C.R. WEAVER: No, not as I know of, they're not trying to preserve those things or at least they should make a museum out of one of them, just a small section set aside.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you say that again and just mention the uh, cotton mills alright?

C.R. WEAVER: Well, they ought to take some of these cotton mills that they've closed down and made warehouses out of and make a museum out of some of 'em, at least a small section of it with the history of people like my father here and what it meant to them.

DUNLAP: I think that perhaps one reason why Knoxville hasn't done that is because we didn't rely solely on textiles. We had other industries. And like 00:28:00in Atlanta or some of the other areas, they are restoring some of this. I think it's very important to restore history.

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, China come in there and put it on the rocks. In other words, go buy something, a washing machine part -- made in Mexico. Anything that you buy now that's made out of the country, why they're doing that, I don't know. That's the reason I'd like to see a union label on the products. If it's got a union label on there, you know it's made in the United States, yeah. You have to go down -- you have to go down to the depot, don't forget you're a union man 100%.

DUNLAP: We all drive American-made cars, don't we?

FOOTS WEAVER: Yeah, but the parts is all made over yonder.

DUNLAP: Probably.

FOOTS WEAVER: They're shipped in.

C.R. WEAVER: Well, I think the '20s and '30s when people were leaving farms, getting away from agriculture, the cotton mills played an important part in the 00:29:00South. It took a lot of people off of starvation, probably. The cotton mill really was a great part of Southeastern history. A lot of people work in 'em.

FOOTS WEAVER: Well, you're living in a different time. You're living in the 20th century and it's the last part of the 20th century right now. We'll have to enter a new area and you young people can control inflation. The reason I say you can control inflation, you walk in and, say, steak's $7 a half a pound. It'll lay there. Let them care of it. It's went out that for. Let them take care of it. Don't boycott it. Just walk by.

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. One final thing. Uh we've—

[break in video]

C.R. WEAVER: A "lint head". The first time I ever heard that expression was in 00:30:00Georgia. Of course, going to the University of Georgia is where I learned that, you know, calling "lint heads". I didn't even know what it was because I didn't work in the cotton mill. But some of the best people I ever knew worked in the cotton mills. And there's always been a stigma with it, for some reason or the other, for that type of people. But he is a good example of a person coming out of a cotton mill and done what he has done and accomplished what he has with his education. And the main thing about him, he cares about other people. He goes to bat for other people, and he does right here in this community. And that's one thing I've learned from him -- he's for other people.

GEORGE STONEY: Great! Cut.

JAMIE STONEY: Speed.

(tone)