DigitalNC: North Carolina's Digital Heritage

Background

In the 1920s and ‘30s, North Carolina was one of the largest producers of textiles in the country. This was partially due to the state’s natural resources, like cotton, and the demand for uniforms during World War I (1914-1918). Textile companies were also interested in the workers of North Carolina, who they could pay very low wages. As a result, many North Carolinians worked in textile mills that spun cotton into fabric for making clothes, blankets, towels, and other apparel products. Most of these workers faced long hours and dangerous working conditions among the machinery and fabric dyes in addition to low pay. However, the textile industry was so large that in many towns, mills were one of the few options for work. The challenge to find better jobs was made even harder after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.

One of the ways that textile workers were able to petition for higher pay, fewer hours, and better working conditions was by joining a labor union and going on strike. A labor union is an organization of workers who use their combined power to negotiate for better pay and working conditions. If the workers are unable to come to an agreement with their boss, they may use a strike as a tool to add pressure. A strike is a protest where all of the workers stop doing their jobs, forcing a business to temporarily shut down.

One of the most famous strikes in North Carolina was at the Loray Mill in Gastonia in the summer of 1929. The Loray Mill was then one of the largest cotton mills in the South, employing about 5,000 people. The strike began with help from Northern union organizers Fred Beal and Ellen Dawson, who advocated for the National Textile Workers Union in Gastonia (NTWU). The NTWU’s association with the Communist Party led many townspeople to feel distrustful of the union, and members of the National Guard were called in by the Governor to mitigate violence. However, on June 7, 1929, local police visited the strikers’ tent camp, and Police Chief Aderholt was shot and killed. Several strikers were arrested on murder charges, including Beal. This led to surges of violence between strikers and anti-Communists, including the kidnapping of several workers and the assassination of Ella May Wiggins, a mill worker who wrote and performed ballads about working conditions. After Wiggins’ death, the strike ended without bargaining, leaving many of the area wary of labor unions.

Textile worker unions struggled to get a foothold in North Carolina after the Loray Mill strike. In 1934, when union membership rose under the federal protections of the F. D. Roosevelt administration, some 300,000-500,000 textile workers all along the East Coast went on strike. Though many from North Carolina participated, they did not receive increased pay or improved working conditions when the strike ended (though some improvements were made in the North, where unions were more powerful). As with the Loray Mill strike, this led many people to give up hope in labor unions. Finally, in 1947, North Carolina passed a right-to-work law, which greatly limits unions’ power.

Then, in the 1970s and ‘80s, unions reappeared in the public consciousness through the story of Crystal Lee Sutton, which was popularized in the fictional film Norma Rae (1979). Sutton was a textile worker in the J.P. Stevens mill in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. Frustrated by the pay and working conditions, Sutton helped build a coalition of Black and white textile workers who wanted to unionize. Though she was fired in 1978 for her efforts, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) began to represent workers at the plant, and the union was able to secure a new contract and back pay for workers in 1980. Though Sutton said that Norma Rae does not represent her true life story, she did credit it for “teach[ing] people about unions.”