(More oral histories will be added)
From the Southern Oral History Program Interview Database: Stanly County
- First-Person Narratives of the American South
- W. Horace Carter
- Carlee Drye
- Clyde Cook
- T. J. Cotton
- David Summerlin
- Harry Royal
- Lillian Taylor Lyons
- Cary Joseph Allen, Jr.
- George Edgar Eddins
- Barbara Britt
“First-Person Narratives of the American South” is a collection of diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives written by Southerners. The majority of materials in this collection are written by those Southerners whose voices were less prominent in their time, including African Americans, women, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans. Access the full collection here: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/index.html
Mr. Carter is a journalist. He is the editor of the Tabor City Tribune, the only weekly newspaper in the United States ever to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service. Mr. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his vigorous campaign against the Ku Klux Klan in his own county, Columbus County, North Carolina. Carter was born and raised in Albemarle, NC.
Carlee Drye worked at the Alcoa aluminum plant in Badin, North Carolina, from the 1930s through the 1950s. An active participant in the establishment of a local union that later merged with the Steel Workers, Drye served as president of the local union from 1952 to 1959. Drye describes briefly the establishment of the local union in Badin, but focuses primarily on his role as the leader of the union in the 1950s and reflects on relations between the union and Alcoa management at the time of this interview in 1980. After describing the merger of the Steel Workers with the AFL-CIO that he helped secure in 1959, Drye speaks at length about the process of eliminating racial discrimination in hiring practices at Alcoa. Although the local union had been largely integrated since the 1930s, Drye explains that similar progress in the actual workplace occurred more slowly. He describes the process of persuading white workers and Alcoa management to change its policies, beginning in the 1950s and into the 1970s. In addition, Drye speculates about the relationship between the union, the community, and Alcoa management in the late 1970s following his retirement and his departure from union activities. Drye explains how the sewer and water systems, previously under control of Alcoa, had passed into the hands of the county, how Alcoa was purchasing and tearing down buildings in the downtown area, and that fewer residents of Badin were finding work in the Alcoa plant.
In 1916, Clyde Cook’s father moved his family to Badin, North Carolina, in order to find a job at Alcoa Aluminum Company. Cook describes growing up in Badin, focusing on his experiences in segregated schools. Because the schools were owned and operated by Alcoa, Cook blames the company for the inequalities he and other African American students experienced. Cook began to work for Alcoa at the age of 16; although there were times when he was laid off and found other employment as a journeyman bricklayer, he worked for Alcoa during most of his working life. In describing his experiences at work, Cook focuses on his frustration with racial hierarchies and the limits imposed on mobility for African American workers within the plant. According to Cook, the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 marked a turning point for these kinds of economic injustices, although there were still obstacles along the way. For instance, Cook describes how African Americans were discouraged and intimidated by their employers during the process of unionization. Nevertheless, enough African Americans joined the ranks of organized labor that conditions gradually began to improve for them throughout the 1940s and 1950s in the plant. Finally, Cook briefly discusses his other activities in the community, focusing on his work with the NAACP. At the time of the interview in 1977, Cook was beginning his second year as the president of the NAACP in Stanly County, North Carolina. Cook describes the persistent lack of job opportunities for African Americans and his goal to open new opportunities for them.
Location and use of the Old Cotton Place, his grandfather’s home and his own birth place; selling of the land; names of families living in Badin before construction of the dam and plant; recruitment of construction workers (who they were, where they came from); law enforcement; worker’s housing; convict labor from Raleigh prison; reaction of families to construction; Jimmy the Greek; description of the French; Badin’s doctors; Palmerville’s schools; Cotton’s decision to leave his farm; weather, bugs, and farming.
David Summerlin entered one of the first apprentice programs at Alcoa begun after the modernization. He has recently been promoted from journeyman millwright to maintenance supervisor, which means he has switched from hourly (union) status to salaried (non-union) status. He is considered by company officials a “man with a future at Alcoa.” He describes working conditions, the response of Alcoa to the government’s directives to improve health standards. He compares the plant before the modernization to the present plant. He talks about women in the plant and of his interest in Badin history. On his property, he runs an antique store which is home to old Badin Bulletins, foremen’s logs from the 1910’a, photographs, signs from the French company, and much more. His dream is to have a museum in one of the old buildings down town and has been interested in buying the pharmacy. Apparently, his interest, or offer, was not sufficiently high. The building has recently been bought by Alcoa and is to be torn down during the summer.
Family background; early schooling; first jobs; beginning of work with ALCOA, 1929; feelings about ALCOA; company housing, The Village; relations with workers who commuted to the plant; importance of work at Badin; establishment of the union; white and black interest in the union; first strike; organizers from inside Badin; changes in working conditions brought on by the union; poll tax in NC; political involvement and precinct work.
Family background; early schooling; first jobs; beginning of work with ALCOA, 1929; feelings about ALCOA; company housing, The Village; relations with workers who commuted to the plant; importance of work at Badin; establishment of the union; white and black interest in the union; first strike; organizers from inside Badin; changes in working conditions brought on by the union; poll tax in NC; political involvement and precinct work.
Cary Joseph Allen, Jr., was an aluminum worker for Alcoa in Badin, North Carolina, during the 1930s. Focusing specifically on efforts to unionize aluminum workers circa 1936 to 1937, Allen describes how initially the only organized labor in the community was within the American Federation of Labor. With weak representation in the AFL, Allen and some of his fellow workers organized to establish a local branch of the Aluminum Workers of America in Badin, N.C. With the goal of local autonomy for the newly formed union, Allen describes local working and living conditions. Alcoa exercised a strong paternalistic influence within the community, and Allen discusses the poor living conditions workers faced in company housing. Moreover, the strong paternalistic influence, according to Allen, made it initially difficult for the union to attract new members. Fearful of losing their jobs, workers were reluctant to organize. Despite these kinds of early setbacks, Allen emphasizes the long-term goals of the union to better working conditions, earn higher wages, and challenge the company’s control over the community. By 1937, efforts to unionize had succeeded.
Palmerville, North Carolina consists today of a charming old white church, a lakefront with a colony of summer cottages, several old frame and brick homes inhabited by people mainly in their seventies and eighties, some aging but usable barns, some unused, wine-covered structures which once were homes. One hundref years ago, the village was the site of the Yadkin Mineral Springs Academy, a well-respected boarding school which attracted individual students and genteel families with school-age children. Between 1904 and 1907, the tranquility of Palmerville was interrupted by the plan of George Whitney, an industrialist from Pittsburgh, to dam the Yadkin River at a location not far from Palmerville. George Edgar Eddins, the son of the man who established and ran the Academy, was a boy during this time of transition for Palmerville. As Mr. Eddins puts it, “It was somewhat of a revolution when the Whitney Company came… It was the creation of a new era. It was a rapid transformation from completely rural atmosphere to what was a very noisy and big industrial development.” The dame was never completed by Whitney who went bankrupt in 1907 but, in 1912, a French aluminum company bought the holdings of the Whitney Company and moved the undustrial site downriver to what would become Badin. Mr Eddins left Palmerville before WWI to attend college and did not return until 1977. His working years were spent in New York where he was involved in banking and finace. Mr. Eddins was well into his eighties when he granted this interview. He lives in his parent’s home and spends most of his time in the wing of the house used by students of the Mineral Springs Academy.
Brief family background; work history from age 18 to acceptance at ALCOA; reasons for working at ALCOA; job conditions and tasks; feelings about job, about working at ALCOA, about being a member of a union; experiences as a woman working in a predominantly male industry; concerns about safety and lay-offs; differences between working for ALCOA and for other companies; case of the two women fired and then rehired due to arbitration of the union.