FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A Grass Roots Movement is Born
The group announced plans to hold a Southwide Cotton Mill Reunion & Convention in April 2005 and called on "anyone and everyone who ever worked in a mill or lived in a mill town" to get involved now before this history vanishes.
Although most representatives were from North Carolina initiative organizers plan to fan out to other the other Southern textile states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia and Tennessee.
Gathering for a planning meeting, which followed, were representatives from Forest City, Gastonia, Dallas, Caroleen, Bynum, Cooleemee, Greensboro, Salisbury, Erwin, Franklinville and Glencoe. Groups from West Durham and West Salem have been involved in planning the effort.
Institutions concerned with textile history preservation also attended including the Levine Museum of the New South, the Gaston County Museum, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the History Department at Catawba College and the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. Support has been conveyed from the NC Division of Archives & History as well as US Representative Richard Burr. Alice Garland, Director of Sen. John Edwards North Carolina office attended.
Unveiling their new website www.TextileHeritage.org the group implored mill village residents, lay historians and those wishing to preserve this unique culture to join its ranks. Its coordinator, Lynn Rumley, made the following statement.
"Today we stand in front of old Cannon Plant #1, a little less than a year from the terrible day that the Pillowtex Corporation announced the biggest industrial shutdown in Carolina history. Pillowtex was not the first textile company to close nor it will be the last.
Maybe something can be done about losing our region’s textile industry, maybe not. But, before the last whistle blows, there is something we can do. We can preserve the history and heritage of this industry and its people.
Over the last hundred years there have been many observations about the cotton mill people of the South; there have also been a lot of assumptions made. These turned into concepts—many of which were one-sided, inaccurate or derogatory.
But, when the story of the region’s principal industry of the last century is finally told, when the veil is lifted from the picture of this unique culture, it will be of great value for future generations.
This is a story of a human endeavor pulled up by its own bootstraps. It is a story of how a new industrial frontier enabled a culture to continue. It is a story of migration and settlement. It is a tale about humility, pride, ability, honor, individuality, communalism, progress and reaction to it.
We are here today to announce the birth of a SOUTHWIDE TEXTILE HERITAGE INITIATIVE. We believe this initiative will become a grass-roots movement to gather and preserve a proud legacy.
First and foremost, today begins our call to anyone and everyone who grew up on a mill hill, in a mill village or at a mill town to take stock—it is time to inventory what we have left.
Facts must be gathered from the census and from the ledgers of company stores & payroll offices. Documents, photographs and artifacts—from butter churns, reed hooks, work aprons to looms, quill skinner machines and spinning frames—must be saved from the trash dumps.
A massive inventory of our places must be undertaken. Today, there is not even a map of the cotton mill South. How many mills and mill houses remain? How many mill neighborhoods are intact? We must find out.
Thousands of stories and surveys must be recorded before those who have them as memories pass from amongst us.
Each mill hill, village and town in the South must commit itself to work and begin now—before the precious fibers of heritage are scattered by the wind. What we inventory, we must also save & preserve.
And, there is much more to explore than laboring in a cotton mill. While we can, we must capture our elders’ sense of humor that got them through many hard times.
We must ponder our parents and grandparents most cherished values—hard work, hard play, loyalty, independence, honor, family & neighborly cooperation.
We must explore and dissect their experience. These are people who lived in transition between two worlds. They came to the mill villages with their chickens, cows and hogs and grew gardens. They were also living in a new modern world and with a little cash they could easily see a motion picture or afford a sewing machine and eventually a car.
The pioneers who built the mills and moved their families from farms and mountain hollows brought a heritage. Many of their ancestors had once spun and wove wool or flax in their cottages of Northern Ireland or the German Rhineland before seeking opportunity in the New World. Their frontier ancestors fought in the American Revolution; their parents and grandparents survived a bloody civil war before moving to a new, industrial frontier. Such historical experience shaped the culture brought to the mill villages.
If this INITIATIVE is successful it will mean that the story of the cotton mill people—the industry they built, the communities they created, the lives they led—will be told to future generations.
The parents of yesteryear prepared a way for their children, giving any help they could to see them into adulthood—leaving them a piece of land to farm or knowledge of a craft or mill job. So must we do for our children and grandchildren. Our heritage is legacy worth far more than money. It may give our children the courage to face new frontiers as they carve out an economic future. Not unlike Native Peoples, we must work hard so that a culture will not vanish in these modern times. It may give our children an anchor for hard times.
If this INITIATIVE is successful it will bring about a great public awareness of the contribution of the South’s cotton mill people. Every year, one week should be set-aside in each Southern state designated as "Textile Heritage Week." School children should explore this story and it must become part of our region’s collective memory.
If this INITIATIVE is successful it will allow us to preserve the familiar settings where these memories can best be shared—under the grand old red brick mill towers, along the narrow streets with side ditches, in the sanctuaries of the humble mill churches, beside the modest mill houses that gave such a feeling of equality, and on the wooded banks of the rivers where our grandparents were baptized, where fishermen caught supper and young couples courted and "sparked."
If this INITIATIVE is successful it will not only provide our children an anchor but it has the potential to create new jobs in a fast growing industry known as "heritage tourism." We’re betting our money that other people will want to hear our story and come to see where it took place.
We think visitors will pay good money to hear the story of a South they are much less familiar with—one where communities pitched in capital to start a cotton mill, places where money was scarce, labors were long —but there was still time for enjoying a new fiddle tune or brass band concert, for yelling at a ball game, for sitting on the porch or for "pounding" a neighbor in need. It was a place where no one locked their doors and where a distinction was made between criminals and outlaws. Let’s remember there would be no NASCAR today without that beaten track from moonshiner to mill hill via that fast driving bootlegger.
This INITIATIVE is a massive undertaking and to make it a success we must:
Involve every group among us from mill owner or manager to card hands, spinner, battery fillers, weaves and men of the "outside crews"
We must give an opportunity for the many mill hill children who did well to give back to their hometowns and villages.
We must allow those banks and other industries—whose existence was dependent on mill people—to better recognize their own origins. You know, cotton mill folks purchased a lot of soft drinks, peanut butter crackers and headache powders from the dope wagons rolled from floor to floor. Mill people had the cash to buy those first radios, becoming a mass audience for the Grand Ol’ Opry and we became the first fans of dirt track racing.
We must look for assistance from community colleges, universities and private colleges—not simply to train us for new jobs—but to help us save our history. All of these are institutions, which the cotton mill people have supported all these years by our tax money and church tithes.
If this initiative is to be successful, cotton mill people and their communities must band together to curb forces that are undermining our future such as absentee landlords, rivers being dried up by power companies and scrap metal dealers melting down machine artifacts to build China’s new dam.
So, if you or your parents grew up on a mill hill—we want to hear from you.
We want you to feel a responsibility to learn and tell this story. Next weekend, take that camcorder and start recording mamaw and papaw. While you’re at it, get your great Aunt to identify those family pictures while she’s still got her mind & eyesight.
We call on you to support and involve yourself in this project by joining a new organization called the Honorary Order of the Bobbin & Shuttle and proudly wear its lapel pin.
If you grew up in a mill village, we want you to fill out the "Mill Family Life Survey," adding your account to the historical record.
Most important we want to invite you to a big "Southwide Cotton Mill Reunion & Convention" to take place next April——2005. If your mill hill is not yet represented on our planning committee, step up to the plate."
You may contact the SOUTHWIDE TEXTILE HERITAGE INITIATIVE by visiting www.textileheritage.org or by calling (336) 284-6040 or by writing Textile Heritage, PO Box 336, Cooleemee, NC 27014.