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Web Site Guide | News | About OWDNA | Neighborhood Info | Photographs of OWD | Media Spotlight | Citizen Resources | Home Depression-era WPA Interviews With Erwin Mill workers A part of our oral history of OWD. The Jackson Family 715 15th Street West Durham, N.C. 15th Street today. September 14, 1938 The last of the summer petunias lent a splash of bright color to the small, smoothly-sown yard of No. 715, 15th St. On the porch, a lazy black cat curled himself against the leather cushion of the porch glider. The front door stood ajar and through it a mild breeze carried the refreshing coolness of an early September day into the living room to the right of the small entrance hall. The fresh [serim?] curtains at the windows stirred lightly with now and then a flurry when a cross current brought a stronger and chillier breeze into the room. The day was Saturday of September, 1938. It was a good day of a good year for James Jackson. The day was good because only that morning he had made the last payment on his eighteen-months old Plymouth car. The year was good because in January he had been made second hand in the spinning room at $27.50 a week. The twelve percent cut which came in July reduced his wage to a little less than $25 but that left enough for him to live on comfortably. His wife worked in the mill until two months ago and made $15 a week. They have been able to save for their first child which will arrive within the next month. James is thirty-two and his straight, well-built body, clear complexion and bright eyes stand as proof of the good health he has always enjoyed. He and his wife now share their four-room house with his mother and his eighteen-year old brother, Clarence. The young Jacksons and Mrs. Jackson occupy the two bedrooms and Clarence sleeps on a cot in the roam which is used as a combination of kitchen and dining room. This three-purpose room has in it no space for storing the canned fruits and vegetables which the older Mrs. Jackson prepared during the summer. Consequently the jars have been arranged in neat rows across the corner near the fireplace in the living room and just opposite the upright piano. There are two hundred jars of beans, tomatoes, corn, peaches, pickles, and preserves. All the vegetables were gathered from the Jackson garden just back of the house. James Jackson sat in his living room on this Saturday in September and discussed the company for which he works. "I don't know of a better company to work for," he declared. "The officials here have the worker's interests at heart. They've furnished us with a fine Auditorium where a person can find free amusement if he wants to. They order coal in big lots and sell it to us without profit for $6.50 a ton. They keep the houses in good repair and rent them to us for almost nothing. I pay $1.50 a week for my four rooms, bath room, and garage. If I didn't live in a company house I'd have to pay $5 a week for a house not kept in as good condition to this. "There are very few people working in the mill who make less than $12 a week when they work full time. Some of the help's sent out now and then as much as a day out of a week to rest but never more than that. We make standard goods -- sheets and pillow cases, you know -- and we generally have orders on hand all the time. "I feel like people living here at this mill have as good or better chance for a decent living as most people working in stores, in offices, and such places where they don't make any more than we do and have a sight more house rent to pay. "Of course the company don't have enough houses for all its help. There's some working in the mills here that's paying $20 a month for rent because they caint get a company house. But the majority of us has the advantage over other working people when it comes to rent." There was about James Jackson spirit of well-being as he talked of the company and of his own life. It seemed to spring from his conviction that he had worked for what he had gotten and had gotten what he had worked for. James, one of eight children, was born on his father's small farm in Sampson County and lived there until he was ten years old. By that time his father, who had quit farming for railroad work a few years earlier, had decided that a steady wage was better than the uncertainties of farm production and farm prices. He moved his family first to Erwin Cotton Mill at Erwin, then to the East Durham Mill, and later to the West Durham will where James still lives. The elder Jackson died a year after his youngest child, Clarence, was born. Up to that time all the children of school age had been able to remain in school. James completed the eighth grade after which he began a course in bookkeeping. Convinced that he was not suited to the type of work he quit the course and went into the spinning room at the age of fifteen. There he has remained and availed himself of his opportunities to learn all he could about his work. He has attended a number of the textile courses offered in night school by the mill officials and he completed a correspondence course in textile work from the International Correspondence Schools. Six years after the elder Jackson's death his widow decided to moved out into the country, but not too far for her children to drive into Durham for their work. She bought on time-payment a home and six acres at Bragtown, about five miles out, and here three of her children not yet old enough to work in the mill raised truck produce. The children who worked in town took the vegetables and sold them to certain stores which could handle all the small farm could supply. After eight years the farm was paid for and the younger members of the family had secured work in the mill. Mrs. Jackson rented her farm and moved back to the mill village. Today all of her children except Clarence are married, and half of them live at the mill while the others live in the country. Clarence who is now in the tenth grade has supported himself by working in the mill since he was fifteen. He quit school after finishing the ninth grade and after a lapse of three years he has decided to finish high school. He is one of the sixty-five students attending the Durham High School Co-operative Class, a class organized for working boys ambitious to complete their high school training. It is conducted so as to fit in with the working schedule of all of its members. Clarence who works in the mill from 3:30 in the afternoon until 12 at night attends classes in the morning from 9 o'clock until 12. "it's pretty hard," he says, "but I'm going to stick it through this year and two more. After that, I don't know what I'll do, but at least I won't be turned down for a job just because I don't have a high school education. I may stay right on in the mill and work up like James. There's not many jobs for the working man that pays more than $25 a week. "And they don't come by just wishing for 'em" James told his brother, that Saturday he'd finished paying for his car. source: Library of Congress Ida Allen 15th Street West Durham, N. C. 15th Street today (next to Greystone Baptist). September 9, 1938 She seems hewn from rough granite, this woman who sits in her front room and talks while her slowly changing expression brings at long intervals a kindly, creeping smile to her ruddy face. Her features though definite and firm in outline have a roughness which makes one think the chiseler laid down his tools before the surface had been smoothed. Change and time have moved about her and brought age to her body, but her mind has remained impervious to change. The beliefs of her childhood are the mainstay of her old age. A tiny light of learning come into her life as a child, and with creditable effort she clung to it and passed it on in such measure as she could to her own children. I shall set down in her own words the story of Ida Allen as she told it to me the other day while I sat with her in her front room which contained a cheap settee, two chairs, a table, and a linoleum rug. "I was born in Chatham County, the second of Sid Reagin's six children. Pa was a good man, always sober and a steady worker. He was thoughtful of Ma and took the best care of her he knowed how. Ma was a weakly woman and Pa seen to it that she stayed in bed for four or five weeks after each one of her children was born. He had a doctor with her every time too, and not all poor folks in them days had doctors. "Before going to the field of a morning at such times when Ma was ailing, he'd lift her outa bed and set her in a chair. When she got weary of settin' I'd go and call Pa, and he'd come and put her in the bed agin. "Before he was married Pa had fought to help free the colored people. He never believed that slavery was right and it taint. Pa never had much of a chance himself and he never learned to write his name. For generations we've been poor people and before me there was none in the family could read. Take Pa though; he'd been glad of a little schoolin' if there'd been any way for him to get it. I'll tell you why I know in a minute. "Pa sent me to a four month's school that cost him a dollar a month. They wasn't free schools in them days and only a few got learning. But it was in me to learn more then I could get in them four months. We lived on Stroud's place then and Mrs. Stroud was my Sunday school teacher. She seen how well I done my Sundry school lesson and she took to havin' me come to her house for school lessons. I got to where I could do fair readin' and writin' and figurin'. They was plenty in them days that got all the schoolin' they ever had from Sundry school teachers that was willin' to teach them for nothin'. "Now comin' back to Pa and the reason I think he'd been proud of a little learning. I've never knowed a person that loved to hear readin' more than him. I got to where I could read any part of the Bible with fair understandin', and of a night after he'd gone to bed, tired out from a hard day's work, I'd set and read to him by the light of a light'ood knot. He loved most of all to hear about the kings of Israel. "They wasn't any foolishness atall about Pa and his younguns was never seen at no sort of party. He said a party was a place where young folks got in trouble and he was goin' to help us stay outa trouble. Till this day I ain't never been to no party and to no picture show neither. "Folks seem awful careless about love in these times to me. It taint a good thing for young girls to read these love story magazines and such like. Hit puts ideas in they heads that's got no business there. I've never read no love story of no kind. Love ain't nothin' to be trifled with, and as for goin' with first one and then the other I think its a pure sin. "They was one boy that come courtin' me and I married him. Bob Allen and me played together when we was children, and then after we was both growed up he took to walkin' home with me from Sunday School of a Sunday. He was twenty-three and I was twenty when we got married. Bob was a wage hand then, gettin' twenty-dollars a month. He kept on at that job and I worked such little patches as I could get. When the children come along and was big enough to work I sometimes raised two bales of cotton a year. We had our own hogs and a cow, and we lived right well. "Then Bob's health give away. He took down with the consumption and he knowed he didn't have long to live. He said that me and the children couldn't make a living on the farm and he wanted to move to the cotton mill where the children could take care of theyselves. They worked children in the mills them days. You know, little ones not more then nine or ten year old. "We moved to Carrboro and the children went to work. They never made much but put together it was enough to feed us. Then I took in washin' for awhile till I got a chance to go to work in the mill. In less than two years Bob had wasted away with the consumption and died. We was a long time payin' for his buryin'. "Eighteen year ago we moved to Durham. We worked some at East Durham and then got on here at West Durham. "My children are all married now with families of they own -- all except Louise. Last week she drawed $9 from the mill and it's like that most times. They send her out for restin' pretty near a day out of every week and she don't have a chance to draw full pay. Me and her and my son's child live on that. My son Ned was killed on the railroad and he left his wife with five children. I took Annie, next to the youngest, to raise and since they ain't no way for me to make money the burden falls to Louise. "I've got one son making $16 a week when he don't have to rest none but he's got six children to support outa that. His daughter Ella had to be operated on for the appendicitis in June and he's still payin' on her doctor's bill. "They's not a child I've got that's really able to take care of me. I put in for the old age pension, and after a long time it started comin' and come three months. Now I don't get it no more. If I had education enough to put my reasonin' down on paper, I'd write a letter to Governor Hoey and explain to his that I'm almost compelled to have that $10 a month if I keep on livin'. None of my children can write it for me either because they ain't got no more learnin' than me. It was never so I could send them to school much, and most of what they know is what I learnt 'em myself. I've not got one that caint read and write some though. "Old ones caint get jobs no more, you know. I'm seventy-two. Maybe if they caint get it straightened out about the old age pension they'll pass a law for doin' away with us old ones that's in the way." Walter & Beth Jackson Resevoir Street West Durham, N.C. Nearby house overlooking the old mill reservoir site. (Reservoir Street once ran near the present-day entranceway to Erwin Square off Hillsborough Road. The large gravel parking lot at the corner today was the old mill resevoir.) July 21, 1937 Reservoir Street leads to the town of Walter Jackson’s residence, and many other residences of families who work for the West Durham Cotton Mill. Walter Jackson is only forty-six, however his shoulders are beginning to sloop, his once brown hair is turning gray, and two front teeth are missing. He lives with his wife Beth and his sixteen-year-old son William, in a small three-roomed shanty. The house was once white but now is a dark brown from the chipped paint and the dark rotted wood. The planks are uneven, and in many places have holes or gaps. The kitchen/living room consists of a old corroded stove, a wooden table with three half-rotten chairs. The walls have the same appearance as the outside. The two bedrooms are simple and only consist of two beds and a beat up trunk. "It has not always been like this," says Mr. Jackson, "We owned a tobacco farm in Wilson. We had a large white house, plenty of good food, good clothes,- then along came ole Roosevelt, and his Emergency Banking Relief Act. He closed our bank, and took all of our money, all of our hard-earned savings. We were forced to sell the farm, all of the land, and all of our belongings. We wondered the streets for months searching for work and shelter. Luckily, I heard about a job at a mill in Durham." Beth Jackson is a woman in her thirties, has long brown ragged hair and wears an old stained blue and white dress everyday. Shortly after the Jacksons arrived in Durham, Beth received permission from the superintendent of the mill to learn how to fill batteries. She did so for three weeks, hoping she will be offered a position and be paid. Her prayers were answered on the third Saturday, "the superintendent called me over and said he was going to put me to work." Beth states that Walter is not content with his job. He is considered the best doffer in the mill, however during full-time work he makes less than eight dollars a week. "I once suggested that he should look into the WPA as a carpenter." However he responded angrily and in disbelief, "I will never work for the same people who took our money, our homes and our lives." The subject was never mentioned again. "I feel sorry for him." Beth says, "he used to be so well off, now he must be humiliated that he can barely support his family." He is a bright handsome boy, who is very loyal to his family. William constantly labors in the cotton fields, deprived from using knowledge he had learned previously. He now has no time for any sort of education. He returns home each day with meager pay, a black dirty face, and soars and filth covering his body. "I remember the days where all I had to worry about was school work," William recalls, "Now I pick cotton for thirteen hours a day, then return home being welcomed by a bowl of cold rice and cornmeal. The mill owner, James, is cruel and does not treat the workers fairly, however I need not mention any of this to my family, for it only causes more concern and depression." Several groups of mill workers joined a Union and striked, however the mill owners destroyed the Unions. They fired the Union workers and blacklisted them. Just like the textile worker strike in September of ’34. "We know we are treated unfairly, however, we must think of the other over 150,000 unemployed North Carolinians and their families suffering and in despair." "I just hope this ends soon for I dread we will not be able to make it through this era of suffering much longer." The Jacksons are not the only family suffering in this community, many other West Durham Cotton Mill workers are experiencing the same misfortunes. The only thing these men and women can do now is to be strong and pray this time of suffering shall end soon. source: Library of Congress Josephine Wallace West Durham Cotton Mill West Durham, N. C. July 5, 1938 If you should meet Josephine Wallace you would more than likely say to yourself, "With a little more 'finish' she'd be a good-looking woman." She has a high forehead, well-shaped nose and mouth, and nice blue eyes. She keeps abreast of the styles--perhaps a little too well--and she is never without a permanent wave. Although she has worked in a cotton mill a good part of her life she does not look more than her forty years. The ambition of Josephine's life is to keep her five children, more particularly her two daughters, out of the mill. She does not mind the hard work she does each day because it is to provide advantages for her children. She is making seventeen dollars a week and her husband twenty-two. They apparently dread the impending wage out more than some families of lesser means because they hate to curtail in any measure the standard of living they have worked out for their family. If you should go to the Wallace home in all probability you would be greeted by one of Josephine's neatly dressed and well-mannered children who would enter into conversation with you as soon as you were both seated in the living-room. The living room is a cheerful, homey place despite the misapplication of color and the lack of taste in choice of ornaments. The door prop is a big china cat which curls itself in indolent laziness and manages to gaze at you no matter where you are seated. The mantel is adorned with two miniature covered wagons, one polar bear, a cat group, and a china center piece which features a little girl looking at a dog and asking, "Can't you talk?" Wherever you turn in the room you are likely to see a gaudy-looking piece of statuary but in a little while you do not mind. Even the too much greenness of the flowered rug which is vying with the colorful drapery ceases to annoy you. Inevitably you reach the conclusion that the people who live here have created for themselves a home. The Wallaces are congenial among themselves and they find friends who share their interest in music. The bad-toned piano is the pride of the household. If Ira Belle, the 17 year old daughter, were to come in during your visit whe would ask you if you could play certain tunes and with a request that she play them for you should would respond readily. She might play Tippy-Tippy-Ten, a number or two from Snow White, several others from recent pictures, and almost certainly Duke University's song. Ira Belle will take from the music rack a number of hymn-books and hand them to you for your inspection. Among them will be a compilation by Gypsy Smith, a favorite of hers. Her grand-father Carrington who was born in England has told her that when he was a lad he ran away from home and lived for a while with the gypsy tribe to which Gypsy Smith belonged. When you put the books aside Ira Belle will play for you a number of hymns which she and members of her family have sung in duet and quartet combinations at the local churches during revivals. The Wallace children are proud of their mother and father. Josephine has told her children that their father traces his ancestry back to the Wallace clan that saved the Crown of Scotland, and that gives the two girls a certain feeling of security as they attend the Durham High School. Ira Belle thinks that many more of the mill girls would go on through high school if they were not made to feel inferior by classmates who have had superior advantages. The past year she was secretary of her section, in which, as she expresses it "All the girls were nice, smart girls and none of them high falutin'." Both of the girls say that Josephine has always seen to it that they were as neatly dressed as anybody in their classes. One point of pride with Josephine's children is the fact that their father who had very little grade school education passed a correspondence course dealing with arithmetic. Josephine herself went through the seventh grade because a certain security in her home made it necessary for her to start to work until she was fourteen. Josephine Wallace is the oldest of five children born to David and Josephine Carrington. David, one of six children, was born in Bidston, Cheshire County, England. His father, a watchmaker and diamond setter, sent him to grade school from the time he was three until he was eleven. At eleven he entered Brassie's Shipyard and worked until he was fifteen. Joining the English navy then he served for eight years and came out a skilled mechanic. Service had brought him to the Atlantic Coast of the United States and in David's words he had become a "free-thinker and wanted to spend the rest of his days in the United States. England in those days was too conservative for me." Shortly thereafter, having made his way to North Carolina, he met and married Josephine Smith who lived in the backwoods country near Sanford. Josephine had to her credit only six months of schooling. Her father had come home from the War between the States crippled with arthritis and unable to do manual labor at all. His girls worked hard on the small farm which he owned and managed to subsist in a meager sort of way. David's skill as a mechanic, when a skilled mechanic was hard to find, made it possible for him to keep a job and make Josephine's life a little easier than it had been. Soon after he was married his pay was increased from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a quarter a day. When he told Josephine the good news she exclaimed "My Lord, that makes us rich folks for sure." She says that no money has ever made her prouder than that first week's wages with the raise for it seemed such a big amount after the lean., hard days she'd known on the farm. From then on David made a fairly decent living for his family and by the year 1912 he had a small bank account. At that time letters from England reminded him that his mother was ageing fast and her health was failing. David could not overcome the desire to see his mother again. He sold all of his property except his household goods and with his wife and three children went to England. After a month's visit among his people, David and his family returned to North Carolina on the Aquitania. Shortly after his return David secured a job as a mill mechanic in West Durham and he has been there since. Josephine as the oldest of the children felt the need of contributing to the family at an earlier age than the others. Then, too, all the girls of her age that she knew had entered the mill. Her younger brothers and sisters attained the age of fifteen before their life in the mill began. One of her brothers is married to a nurse and one of her sisters whose husband owns two houses in Asheville is supervisor in a cigarette factory in Richmond. The other brother and sister are married and working in the same mill with Josephine. Josephine is proud of her father and mother. She likes to tell you that the older Josephine, now sixty-one, got another permanent last week. She will look at the large photograph of her which stands on the piano, and say "That's a good picture but lot of folks have told me they didn't think it done mama justice." If her father's name is brought into the conversation she will probably tell that he is a thirty-second degree Mason. Josephine's ambition for her children is hardly more pronounced than is her husband's. He is determined to educate his children so that they may make a living of which they will not be ashamed. Though Tom Wallace's father became Chief of Police of Burlington before his death, the older ones of his seven children knew many hard days and were glad of a chance to work in the mill when they were no more than ten or eleven years old. The Wallaces have not saved any money during their married life but they have provided their children with a respectable home. If Josephine's health holds out and the mill continues to need them both they plan to send all their children through high school and to give the two girls business training to equip them for the profession of court stenographer. source: Library of Congress According to the Library of Congress, the Roosevelt Administration was concerned about the plight of unemployed writers, lawyers, teachers, and librarians. Many felt that the New Deal should offer more appropriate work situations for this group other than blue collar, construction jobs. In 1938, the Works Projects Administration hired Mrs. Ida L. Moore to interview mill workers living in West Durham. More interviews with Erwin Mill workers