Textile Heritage Movement

For Immediate Release
April 27, 2005

TEXTILE HERITAGE MOVEMENT TAKES BIG STEP FORWARD

     Cooleemee, NC—As they traveled back to their homes, heads swirling with memories of a distant time, there was also excitement and resolve added to the mix of emotions. Delegates to the first “Cotton Mill Reunion & Convention” held last weekend in Kannapolis, NC expressed renewed determined to see that their mill hill ancestors “get their page in history.”
     Just over two hundred came from Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas. They attended a myriad of workshops, speeches, exhibits, book-signings and even a performance of specially created music by a Charlotte Symphony Ensemble. Smaller sessions taught skills needed to create local history projects, such as techniques to interview mill village elders or save old cotton mill buildings for new uses.
     Speeches, such as the one by Roberdel mill hill native Dr. Jerry McGee, simply struck deep chords of identification and inspiration to tell the story of the region’s textile people to future generations. McGee, who today is President of Wingate University near Charlotte, spoke about his mill hand grandfather who always grew extra tomatoes in his garden for their neighbors. “Those were the values held by cotton mill people,” he said.
     Martin Foil, Jr., President of Tuscarora Yarn, the last mill running in the once textile-dominated Cabarrus County, warned that unfair foreign competition threatens to finish off all American manufacturing.
     On Saturday, at the Cannon Mills-built A.L. Brown High School, Councilman Jim Jones of Valley, Alabama introduced three “action” resolutions that were unanimously affirmed at the meetings final session just before it adjourned to the singing of “Amazing Grace” and a blast from a mill whistle.
     Representatives resolved to establish the first week of every October as “Textile Heritage Week” in every Southern textile state by 2006. Not only will they ask their governors and state legislatures to make proclamations but they will begin the more difficult work of devising public awareness campaigns and school lessons that will shape what is written about the region’s once-predominant industry and the culture of its mill hill communities.
     Delegates also voted unanimously to create a “I-85 Textile Heritage Corridor” extending from Alabama to Virginia which could encourage the development of exhibits, museums and attractions for the visiting public. “You shouldn’t have to go all the way to New England to find a comprehensive textile museum,” said Rick Hudson of China Grove, N.C. “This was a very different industrial experience, one that brought a region up from devastation. Our children and grandchildren should have an opportunity to learn about it right here.” Hudson penned the Reunion’s third resolution, which encourages preserving some of the remains from the giant Cannon Mills complex in Kannapolis.
     “I didn’t know that quilt was going to be here today, up on the stage,” said Ann Cranford, a delegate from Cooleemee, NC. “I remember the hours my sister and I spent with my mother making that quilt of suit samples from the company store. It just brought back a flood of memories,” she said tearfully. Her father, Monroe Ridenhour, was a weaver at Erwin Mills and, along with her sister and four brothers, she grew up in the former mill town.
     South Carolina towns of Marietta, Rock Hill, Ft. Mill, Walhalla, Lyman, Greenville, Gaffney, York, Spartanburg, Great Falls, and Marietta were all represented. A handful of delegates attended from Georgia and Virginia.
     A loose coalition calling itself the “Southwide Textile Heritage Initiative organized the convention to begin cultivating a grass-roots history movement in cotton mill towns across the South to “gather the stories before the last whistle blows” said Reunion Coordinator Jim Rumley. “There are yet so many questions we need answers to. No one else will do this for us. At this point, no one even knows how many mill villages existed or the original names of the mills.” He says that since the Initiative was born in July, 2004, its network now embraces representatives from over a hundred Southern cotton mill towns, villages and “mill hills.”
     Coordinated by the Textile Heritage Center at Cooleemee, the Initiative has already published the first issue of a 64-page magazine called “The Bobbin & Shuttle,” available by mail for a donation of $5 which includes shipping. They will publish another issue in the fall of 2005 and are seeking articles, stories and photographs.
     The Reunion was made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council. The “Honorary Order of the Bobbin & Shuttle” has been formed to continue underwrite the Initiative with annual dues of $30. Order members receive a handsome lapel pin, the magazine and progress reports. Financial support is also being sought to coordinate the Initiative from private foundations and families long associated with the textile industry.
     “We want to create new partnerships with schools, community colleges, libraries, mill town governments and tourism agencies,” said planning committee member Paul Sams, who grew up in Greensboro’s Cone Mills village of Revolution. “Those who lived this way must be the driving force telling its story. I think our grandparents, childhood Sunday school teachers and elders who have already passed on would be really proud of what we are doing. It’s a way of keeping their memories alive.”
     Political support for the effort appears to be growing in North Carolina. Julia Howard, who represents the 79th District in the N.C. House, greeted the group’s opening assembly on Friday and is sponsor of House Bill #8 which will garner funds for the coalition’s work. On Saturday morning, U.S. 8th Congressional District Representative Robin Hayes, who began working as a teenager at the bottom rungs of the mills owned by his family, encouraged delegates to preserve what he termed “an important history.”
     Want to get involved? Write the Textile Heritage Center at PO Box 667, Cooleemee, NC 27014 or visit their website at www.TextileHeritage.org.
                                                 The End

Visitors look over ambitious plans by the Town of Forest City, NC to reuse the old Florence Mill. A similar display was hosted by the City of Valley, Alabama which has also purchased one of its abandoned cotton mills.

A delegate registers for the first "Cotton Mill Reunion & Convention" held in Kannapolis, NC on April 22 & 23

A number Mill town authors autographed books at the Reunion including Concord natives Jewel Dean Love Suddath and her sister Sue Ellen Love Frye.

Memories flooded back as many older cotton mill veterans got a look at an authentic "dope wagon" on display