Today in Labor History April 1, 1929: Textile workers struck at the Loray Mill, in Gastonia, N.C. Textile mills started moving from New England, to the South, in the 1890s, to avoid the unions. This escalated after the 1909 Shirtwaist strike (which preceded the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire), the IWW-led Lawrence (1912) and (1913) Patterson strikes, which were led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca. The Gastonia strike was violent and bloody. Dozens of strikers were imprisoned. A pregnant white woman, Ella Mae Wiggins, wrote and performed songs during the strike. She also lived with and organized African American workers, one of the worst crimes a poor white woman could commit in the South. The strike ended soon after goons murdered her. Woody Guthrie called Wiggins the pioneer of the protest ballad and one of the great folk song writers.

Wiley Cash wrote a wonderful novel about Ella Mae Wiggins and the Gastonia strike, “The Last Ballad.” Jess Walter wrote a really great novel about the Spokane free speech fight, featuring Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, called “The Cold Millions.” Other novels about the Gastonia strike include Sherwood Anderson’s, “Beyond Desire,” and Mary Heaton Vorse’s, “Strike!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJj65ZmjnS8

#workingclass #LaborHistory #gastonia #loray #strike #union #EllaMayWiggins #WoodyGuthrie #novel #fiction #HisFic #IWW #TriangleShirtwaist #books #author #writer #historicalfiction #folkmusic #racism #communism #woodyguthrie @bookstadon

#gastonia #northcarolina #unitedstates - Brookside Elementary School: Strange noises from the woods on the Auten Road side have been reported several times, as well as si. . . Read: https://hauntedlineage.com/directory/brookside-elementary-school

#apparition #elementaryschool #school #strangenoises #woods

Today in Labor History October 9, 1874: Mary Heaton Vorse was born. Vorse was a labor journalist who participated in and wrote eyewitness accounts of many of the significant labor battles of her day. In the 1910s, she was the founding editor of the “Masses,” as well as an activist in the suffrage and women’s peace movements. In 1912, she participated in and wrote about the Lawrence textile strike. She helped organize the Wobblies’ unemployment protest in New York, 1914, and was good friends with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. In 1916, she reported on the IWW Mesabi Range strike. And in 1919, she worked as a publicist for the Great Steel Strike. She also wrote the novel, "Strike!" about the 1929 textile mill strike, in Gastonia, North Carolina, which was made into a film in 2007.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #MaryHeatonVorse #strike #union #IWW #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #gastonia #feminism #peace #writer #author #fiction #books #journalism #novel @bookstadon

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