7.4 Work and protest: Voices

Eula McGill

Eula McGill discusses her first recollections of union activities during World War I. (1:50)

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Eula McGill talks about her father’s activism in steel mills and a local Labor Day Parade, as well as her father’s description of what a union was. (3:59)

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Eula McGill talks about efficiency experts and the Bedot system. (2:05)

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Eula McGill talks about conditions in different mills and her work relationships with supervisors. (2:41)

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Eula McGill discusses workers’ grievances. (2:18)

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Eula McGill talks about the events leading up to the strike. (3:01)

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Eula McGill describes the difficulties workers had talking about their grievances with management. (1:06)

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Eula McGill talks about the day that workers went on strike. (4:42)

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Eula McGill describes management’s reaction to the strike. (1:10)

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Eula McGill discusses the end of the strike and her feelings about it afterward. (1:10)

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Eula McGill interviewed by Jacquelyn Hall, Atlanta, Georgia, February 1976. Interviews #G-39 and #G-40 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Naomi Trammel

Naomi Trammel talks about the stretch-out at Judson Mills. (2:34)

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Naomi Trammel interviewed by Allen Tullos, Greenville, South Carolina, March 25, 1980. Interview #H-258 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• Next: Alice Caudle talks about mill work

Contents: North Carolina in the early 20th century

Chapter 7: Industry and labor

• Next: Alice Caudle talks about mill work
• Previous: Work and protest, 1920–1934

As you read

These interviews were part of a larger collection of oral histories collected in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The interviewers were interested in capturing the experiences of the men and women who were part of the early textile industries in North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century.

The interviews were the bases of a book entitled Like A Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, published by University of North Carolina Press in 1987. You can learn more about this project and listen to more interviews at the Like A Family website.

Eula McGill

Eula McGill was born in Georgia in 1911. At the age of 14, she had to leave school because of her family’s economic hardships, and she found work as a spinner in a textile mill. In the late 1920s she moved to Alabama, where she again worked in textile mills and became a labor organizer.

Naomi Trammel

Naomi Trammel grew up in the country, in South Carolina, but when she was ten years old, her parents died, and she and her older sister moved to a nearby mill town to work in a textile mill. She continued working in textile mills until mid-century.

Questions to consider

1. Which of Eula McGill’s parents attended union meetings? Why?
2. How did McGill’s father describe a union? Why did he feel it was important to join a union?
3. What were conditions like in the mills where McGill worked?
4. How did management treat workers who asked for improvements in wages and working conditions?
5. How did factory owners treat union members?
6. What were the main grievances of workers? Why did they decide to go on strike?
7. How did the managers treat the workers when they went on strike?
8. How did McGill feel when her strike failed? Was she discouraged? Why or why not?
9. Did McGill feel that union activity was a failure or success? Why?
10. What was “stretching-out”? Why was it a problem?

Learn more

Related topics

• Search LEARN NC for more resources on history, labor, labor unions, strikes, textile mills, and women.

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