H-0057_Audio |
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Object Description
Interview no. | H-0057 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | H.2. Piedmont Industrialization, 1974-1980: Burlington, N.C. |
Project description | Interviews, 1977-1984, about industrialization in Burlington, N.C., an early textile industry site and home to Burlington Industries, at one time the largest textile corporation in the world. Interviews focus on former workers of the E.M. Holt Plaid Mill, owned by the Holt family, and on the Pioneer plant, owned by Burlington Industries. Work, family, and living conditions are covered extensively. Other topics include geographic and job mobility; the transition from family ownership (the Holt mills) to corporate management (Burlington Industries); technology; work organization; the impact of the Depression and World War II; occupational sex roles; and child labor. Interviews were chiefly conducted as part of the "Perspectives on Industrialization: The Piedmont Crescent of Industry, 1900-1940" project. |
Date | 27 July 1977 |
Interviewee | Whitesell, Emma. |
Interviewee occupation | Textile workers |
Interviewee DOB | 1901 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Kuhn, Cliff. |
Abstract | Emma Whitesell started her working life at age twelve, inspecting cloth at a textile mill, and continued work after marrying a childhood friend and bearing five children. In this interview, she describes her work at these mills--many in or near Burlington, North Carolina--sharing details about the kinds of work she did. As she does so, she offers a glimpse into the life of a working mother in the early twentieth century. This interview provides a portrait of a strong personality, as well as a broad sense of the world of the white working class in the American South. |
Subject Topical |
Child labor--North Carolina. Women textile workers. |
Citation | Interview with [interviewee name] by [interviewer name], [interview date] [interview number], in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | H-0057_Audio |