H-0077_Audio |
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Object Description
Interview no. | H-0077 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | H.3. Piedmont Industrialization, 1974-1980: Bynum, N.C. |
Project description | Interviews, 1976-1979, about industrialization in Bynum, N.C., a company-owned mill town in Chatham County. Many interviewees worked at the J.M. Odell Manufacturing Company, a spinning mill, for part or all of their careers. Topics include technology, the impact of the Depression and World War II on the mill, paternalism, work discipline, work division by sex and race, unionization attempts, brown lung and other health hazards of mill work, recollections of London family members who ran the mill, mill village life, and the transition from company to private ownership in the 1970s. Interviews were chiefly conducted as part of the "Perspectives on Industrialization: The Piedmont Crescent of Industry, 1900-1940" project. |
Date | 11 August 1979 |
Interviewee | Gerringer, Carrie Lee, 1909?- |
Interviewee occupation | Textile workers |
Interviewee DOB | 1909 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | DeNatale, Douglas. |
Abstract | Carrie Lee Gerringer was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, around 1909. She focuses primarily on what it was like to raise a family and work in the textile industry in Bynum, North Carolina. Gerringer recalls spending more time at household chores than at play during her childhood. She left school at the age of 14 to begin working in the textile mills--an occupation she kept for more than 50 years--and married at the age of 16. She and her husband had six children, one of whom died from leukemia as a child. She discusses at length how it was often difficult for her family to make ends meet: she and her husband juggled shifts in the textile industry so that they would not have to hire extra help with the children, and her husband often took on extra work painting houses. Gerringer offers vivid portraits of working in textile plants. |
Subject Topical |
Bynum (N.C.)--Social life and customs. Women textile workers--North Carolina--Bynum. Child labor--North Carolina--Bynum. Textile industry--Technological innovations--North Carolina--Bynum. Textile workers--North Carolina--Bynum. Working mothers--North Carolina--Bynum. Textile workers--North Carolina--Bynum. |
Subject Name | Gerringer, Carrie Lee, 1909?- |
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-0077_Audio |