GEORGE STONEY: And action!
00:01:00[Silence]
M1: Action!
00:02:00[Silence]
00:03:00[Silence]
M1: Ok, we're rolling did you know that?
M2: No I didn't
M1: Ok, I don't have power to stop it.
M2: Ok.
[break in video]
00:04:00[Silence]
00:05:00[Silence]
M1: Take 3, last take.
00:06:00[Silence]
00:07:00[Silence]
M1: Um wait pause?
00:08:00M2: No we're rolling.
M1: Yeah you're rolling correct?
00:09:00[Silence]
00:10:00[Silence]
00:11:00[Silence]
00:12:00[Silence]
M1: We have some kids playing down here.
00:13:00[Silence]
00:14:00ROGER ZIMMERMAN: -- company right now. Been with 'em 21 years.
GEORGE STONEY: How old were you when you first started working in the mills?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: I was 27 years old, and I worked in the office, although later
I went to a plant and I was a manager of a production area as well as controller.STONEY: One of the reasons I wanted you to talk with your kinsperson here is to,
to see how similar your impressions of life in the mills were with what she remembers. So when you were growing up what did people tell you it was like in the mills, when they were growing up?ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: His daddy was a groceryman, but Leona worked in the mill.
STONEY: But you heard stories all the time?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Yeah, I've always heard stories, but the things I've heard are
00:15:00not the same experiences I've got now. Ah, you know, basically our mills now are air conditioned, they're clean. When you -- I used to go through tours down here where once or twice every couple of years they would have a -- a Cracker Day, or something they called it, and we'd tour the plant and, ah, it was dark. Our plants are well-lit. There's all the difference in the world and one of the main things is we don't run cotton or wool, which is a very, ah, messy, creates a lot of waste. We run polyesters and nylons, modern fibers, but our equipment, you know, it looks like somebody's home. Down here and in all the old cotton mills, I know we'd all heard the stories about how dirty it is and how hard the working conditions, the heat and everything. And it's -- I just don't see that. 00:16:00Like I say, I've heard about 'em and I know it's true, but still it's not true where I work.STONEY: What we're trying to find out is what caused this bit explosion in 1934.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: You mean the strike?
STONEY: Yes.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Roosevelt called -- Roosevelt called it.
STONEY: Roosevelt called the strike?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Yes, sir.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: No. He -- he was President when it was -- happened, but the
strike was because people didn't --ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: He called a national strike.
M3: No, ma'am.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: No, ma'am.
STONEY: What would you say caused it, Roger?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Working conditions. People weren't working. Their families
were going hungry.F1: Poor wages.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Well, the wages were bad, but if people were working it would
have still be okay, but they were working what -- a day a week maybe? Sometimes 00:17:00they weren't getting that much time. Now that is before I was born. The only thing I know about it is the stories I've heard, but I've also read the history of it.STONEY: Now where did you read the history of it?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Well, I study history. I studied textiles in the early days.
We have a very extensive library in our company and I check out books. My uncle has told me an awful lot about the mills. Aunt Mae and Aunt Lo working 50 years each in a spinning mill -- spinning room.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Forty-nine years, one month.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: We going to credit you with 50. (laughter) My mother worked
there for a while, but she didn't -- she didn't work long.GEORGE STONEY: So the history of the strike and the history of those conditions
has been well known in this community?ROGER ZIMMERMAN: By the older people. Now --
00:18:00ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Leona was a-working.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Well, she was working back then.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Uh hum.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: But she didn't work like you and Aunt Lo did for 50 years.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: No, but she worked there till the baby.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: But I would daresay that if you talked to a hundred people my
age, you may find two that even know about it. It'd be that few. They'd had to have been around the people who were there and people -- now nobody knows anything about history. You know that if you've been talking to people. The people who know about it were there. Nobody studies anymore.STONEY: Do you think that there's been an avoidance of the facts?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: I don't really think there's been an avoidance. I think it's
been a normal -- you know, it's like World War II. You take anybody now under 40, they don't know anything about World War II except the John Wayne movies. They don't really understand what happened, and I don't want to say they don't 00:19:00care, but they don't know.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: People, they go on about the working conditions. I's
talking to Judy while ago. We didn't -- our processes wasn't like they -- I mean we always had plenty to eat. I never -- Papa always had peas, cows, hogs. Always there's a big garden and there's 11 of us, but we never did go hungry for nothing.STONEY: As I say, one of the things that I still can't get hold of is why we're
getting such a different picture of the situation here from so many different people. Why do you think that's true?ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: I don't know.
00:20:00STONEY: Could you tell us what your version of the strike was?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Well, I was with the rest of 'em and I was one of 'em that
went to Atlanta (inaudible). But this girl -- this woman across the road, Rachael Smith, told me today, "Y'all better not say anything to Moselle" -- not Moselle - who is it? "Olivia Kramer or her sister," because, said, they didn't like for nobody to mention it. I don't care for telling. We didn't know where we were going, but we went up there trying to get the people to come out. That's what Roosevelt wanted people to do, was to organize. We were complying 00:21:00with his wishes. Trying to.STONEY: Do you remember man named Homer Welch?
ETTA MAE ZIMMER: Sure.
STONEY: Tell me about Homer Welch.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: They accused him of having a pistol, knowing that he did
not. Homer was a good person. Him and Leola spent what they had saved trying to keep the union together. And he went through a lot, but he did not have a pistol.STONEY: Was he on the truck with you?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: They didn't -- Homer didn't go. I mean he was in the
crowd, but he wasn't put on the truck. I don't know how -- I don't know just how many men from Hogansville, but now Papa did not have to go. He just got on there anyway 'cause I was on there. (laughs) 00:22:00ROGER ZIMMERMAN: He wasn't going to let you go by yourself, even if it was to jail.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Uh huh.
STONEY: Why do you think that he insisted on going?
ETTA MAE ZIMMER: Well, for one thing, he was -- I think Papa joined the union,
but why don't you check on them people that come up here and organized? I told Leona, I said, he'd find other people. He'd find that letter Papa wrote to Roosevelt and find that one he wrote to Eugene Talmadge. Maybe you could find out the two men that organized here.STONEY: That's exactly what we're trying to find out, and we were talking to
Harry Barton today. What part did Harry Barton play?ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Well, he worked in the card room and I don't know who
00:23:00promised him a better job, but if he'd come down here to the old mill and break -- I mean get them people out from in front of the mill, he'd get a better job. He got a better job. He got an office job. Harry didn't tell you that.STONEY: Did -- have you heard that story?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Yes.
STONEY: Could you tell it the way you heard it?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Well now, Harry wasn't the only one.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: I'd tell it just like she told it.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Harry -- ah, the -- can't think of his name. Well
thought-out. He was the secretary to the union and he did the same thing. Lester -- what's his name? Mr. Lester's son. 00:24:00ROGER ZIMMERMAN: I don't know.
M3: Ed.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Ed Lester?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Yeah. He got a better job.
STONEY: Now what's the story you heard?
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: The story -- I've heard all these stories a bunch of times,
but never in any more detail than what Aunt Mae's told. Ah, let's see, I've heard 'em in the last 20 years. Before that, if I heard 'em, they didn't register. But it's -- it's not a subject that we've ever talked about a whole lot, is it, Aunt Mae?ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Uh uh.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: It comes up. So we laugh about it. I mean Aunt Mae getting
arrested's one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life. I mean this -- this lady --ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: They didn't know where they -- didn't none of them little
boys that was on that truck know where we was going.ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Didn't know why you was on that truck, did you?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: They didn't know -- I mean when we got up there, they
00:25:00didn't have no place for you to stay except that barn. They moved two cars out and a truck, or tractor, and that's where they sent the cots down from the Army. I had on Leona's plastic coat and I slept in the coat that night and I rubbed a blister on my arm. (laughs)STONEY: Well, I know that there've been some
stories around. You were telling them. Tell me the story about Harry Barton because it's a little different and I don't understand.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: I just now told it.
STONEY: No, I'm just asking him to tell it.
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: Well, that's how he got into management, is he was with the
strikers until they asked him to be a strike breaker is what it was, talk the pickets into going home, which he did. And that's the story I've always heard. I understand he told that different, which -- 00:26:00ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Now Harry was a good neighbor, but they lived -- they
didn't live by us then. But after that they moved the second house down here and he and his wife and family was good neighbors.STONEY: Now people have stressed -- we were talking over at East Newnan last
night to three generations. And they were stressing how it split churches and families and everybody apart for a while.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: It did.
STONEY: Could you talk about that, Etta Mae?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Well, Mr. and Mrs. McCreary(?) down here were good
neighbors, but they didn't want to have nothing to do with us after we joined the Nav-- (laughs) joined the union. Grandpa and Grandma Johnson across the street were good neighbors, but Mr. Johnson set up at night and watched this 00:27:00house. He told Mr. --ROGER ZIMMERMAN: (inaudible)
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: -- Andrews one night. Mr. Andrews come from work and he
walked out on the porch. He said, "You know they're still having union meetings over there at the Zimmermans?" Mr. Andrews said, "Well, it's their business." But we -- we never had a union meeting here at all. I didn't do anything I was ashamed of. I'm still not ashamed of it.STONEY: Another thing that people who watched that footage of the strikers
being carted off, they want to know where you got the courage to come out.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: What you mean "come out"?
STONEY: Go on that -- go out and protest.
00:28:00ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: I was just with the others. We was down here in front of
the mill and Leona had been in a bunch, but she -- Leona can't go nowhere without her breakfast. I went off without my breakfast. (laughter) We got down there and there was a truck coming from LaGrange and I never did -- I didn't know but one person on it, but there were women, boys -- there's women and boys and men and they were going to Newnan. They asked us to go and we went with 'em. They's one boy on the truck that he was lots younger than I am, but his name was Travis Swetman and he said, "I know you, but I'll be you don't know me." Well, I didn't know him. His daddy got his arm cut off in a mill and he has a certificate hanging on his wall where he's to always have a job in Newnan 00:29:00Mill. That's what he got for his arm getting cut off.STONEY: Well, you represented several hundred thousand textile workers in the
South who all of a sudden decided that they were going to form a union. And that's the thing that we're trying to get.ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: How's that?
STONEY: Did you realize that you represented several hundred thousand?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: Sure didn't.
STONEY: Did you know that a lot of other people were coming out?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
STONEY: You didn't read the papers?
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: I guess I did, but I don't know what you're talking about.
STONEY: Well, did --
ROGER ZIMMERMAN: I think Aunt Mae felt like