Helen Turner and Elsie Turner Interview

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Okay let's see, how we doing now?

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses how her family came to Atlanta to work in Whitter Cotton Mill and what her work and pay was like.

Subjects: Atlanta (Ga.); Rural-urban migration; Wages--Women; Women textile workers

Partial Transcript: HELEN TURNER: So then Roosevelt was elected.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses the impact of the election of Franklin Dealno Roosevelt and his labor policies had on her work in the textile mill.

Keywords: eight hour workday; stretch-out

Subjects: Minimum wage; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Let's backtrack a little bit, tell me about the inside of the cotton mill.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses what it was like to work in a cotton mill.

Keywords: mill buildings; women mill workers

Subjects: Textile workers; Working class--Songs and music

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Were you married in the '30s by then?

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses gettting married, going to work and her education.

Keywords: spinners; women mill workers

Subjects: Women textile workers; Working class women; Working class--Education

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Well actually why don't you tell me a little bit about, you lived through the depression in this village.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses what she and her family did when the mill was shut down by the Depression in order to make ends meet.

Keywords: women mill workers

Subjects: Great Depression; Working class women

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: When did the mill open back up?

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses going back to the mill when it reopened, shopping at the company store, her paycheck, and her house in the mill village.

Keywords: mill villages; women mill workers

Subjects: Company stores; Textile workers; Women textile workers; Working class--Dwellings

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: So often were you able to make money in your pay envelope or was there a lot taken out?

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses the impact of the company store and mill village on wages and the Great Depression.

Keywords: mill villages; women mill workers

Subjects: Company stores; Great Depression; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945

Partial Transcript: HELEN TURNER: Well when my mother and daddy lived here when my oldest brother was born, oh it was back about 19 and 5 or 7.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner discusses the mill village and her supervisors in the mill.

Keywords: mill managers; mill villages; women mill workers

Subjects: Textile workers

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Let's go back to the '30s.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner and an unidentified woman discuss the textile workers' strike of 1934, and what happened to the strikers who were blacklisted.

Keywords: doffer; spinners; union organizing; women mill workers

Subjects: Blacklisting, Labor; Marriage; Strikes and lockouts--Textile industry; Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934); Textile workers; Textile workers--Labor unions; Working class women

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: The one thing that touched me last night, that I really went home thinking about was,how many hours you must have worked everyday.

Segment Synopsis: Helen Turner and an unidentified woman discuss Helen's work as a mother, and why she retired when she did.

Keywords: women mill workers

Subjects: Working class women; Working class women--Family relationships

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Why don't you, just for the sake of the tape, tell me your name and where we are and your address.

Segment Synopsis: Elsie Turner discusses coming to Whitter Mill and the impact of Roosevelt's labor policies on the cotton mill.

Keywords: National Recovery Administration; eight hour workday; women mill workers

Subjects: Minimum wage; Textile workers; United States. National Recovery Administration

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: If you hadn't been living in one of the houses would you've been able to live at the time

Segment Synopsis: Elsie Turner discusses living in the mill village, how she was paid, and shopping at the company store.

Keywords: eviction from mill village houses; mill villages

Subjects: Company stores; Great Depression; Wages; Working class--Dwellings

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: I'm gonna jump just a bit, you were just telling me a little bit about the strike, and you're probably the first person that I spoke to today that remembers this strike in '34.

Segment Synopsis: Elsie Turner discusses the textile workers' strike of 1934 and how a man got his throat cut during in the strike.

Keywords: mill owners; picket lines; violence during the strike

Subjects: Textile Workers' Strike (Southern States : 1934)

Partial Transcript: F1: Did you realize back in those years that y'all were making a lot less money than other people out on other jobs?

Segment Synopsis: Elsie Turner and an unidentified woman discuss people's perceptions of cotton mill workers.

Keywords: lintheads

Subjects: Textile workers; Wages

Partial Transcript: JUDITH HELFAND: Did they ever try and get a union into this mill?

Segment Synopsis: Elsie Turner and an unidentfied woman discuss who might know more about further union organizing drives at the Whitter Mill.

Subjects: Textile workers