Chiquola Mill Massacre

Last updated

Chiquola Mill Massacre
Part of Textile workers strike (1934)
DateSeptember 6, 1934
Location
Honea Path, South Carolina

34°27′06″N82°23′31″W / 34.451653°N 82.391924°W / 34.451653; -82.391924
Number
50 [1] to 126 [2] deputized townsmen and anti-union millworkers
300 to 350 strikers [3] [4] [5]
Casualties
Death(s)7 strikers killed [lower-alpha 1]
InjuriesBetween 20 [7] and 75 [1]

The Chiquola Mill Massacre, also known locally as Bloody Thursday, was the violent dispersal of a picket line of striking workers outside the Chiquola textile mill in Honea Path, South Carolina. The strike was part of the textile workers' strike of 1934, which mobilized workers up and down the East Coast of the United States in response to the worsening labor conditions during the Great Depression.

Contents

Violence broke out when Dan Beacham, the mayor and magistrate in Honea Path as well as the superintendent of the mill, ordered an armed posse of strikebreakers to fire into the crowd. As the crowd fled, six strikers were shot in the back and killed, one mortally wounded, and thirty others suffered less than mortal wounds.

Beacham obstructed court proceedings against himself and the other strikebreakers, and ordered some of the strikers arrested. Dozens of unionized workers were fired or evicted from their company homes, and after the defeat of the larger strike on September 23, the unionization effort in Honea Path largely came to an end. Until the 1994 publication of "The Uprising of '34" and the subsequent journalistic work of Dan Beacham's grandson, Frank Beacham, the events of the massacre were largely undiscussed in Honea Path. Today, the event is memorialized by a stone marker in nearby Dogwood Park.

Background

The Chiquola Mill was opened by James David Hammett in 1903, originally for the production of coarse cotton sheeting. [8] [9] It was only one of hundreds of textile mills that began to pop up throughout the American South during this time. Honea Path was a tiny, isolated town of less than seven hundred people before the mill. [10] But over the next decade, the population was swelled by mill hands drawn from the ranks of upstate South Carolina's small farmers, who had been pressured off their farms by tightened credit. [8] [11] By the early 1930s, Honea Path was home to around 2,700 people, mostly employed in the mill or related industries. [10]

Conditions at the mill were very poor, especially during the 1920s and into the Great Depression. All mill workers rented their homes from the company, making them vulnerable to eviction for workplace infractions. [12] The mill employed child labor, some of which was unpaid because the children were only "learning" to work in the mill. [2] The economic decline in the mill industry that followed the First World War led to an increase in so-called "stretch-outs": increased production quotas with no accompanying increase in pay. [13] [14] Although labor unions were largely absent, wildcat strikes became increasingly common towards the end of the decade. In 1929, 79,027 workers participated in eighty-one separate strikes across South Carolina. [15] Without union organization, these strikes proved difficult to maintain or coordinate, and most were over quickly.

The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the American presidency in 1932 caused a sea change in Southern mills. Unlike previous administrations, Roosevelt openly encouraged workers to join unions. [13] [14] Workers in Honea Path "felt like Franklin Roosevelt was going to lead us out of the dark days". [16] The United Textile Workers (UTW) grew from 15,000 in February 1932 to 270,000 in 1934, largely by rapid expansion into the Southern United States. [17] [18] The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to write industry standards that would address some of the worst abuses. [17] [19] However, NRA's Textile Industry Committee was dominated by men such as Thomas Marchant, a cotton magnate, and George Sloan, the spokesman for the industry trade group. The resultant Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton Textile Industry had some benefits for the workers, such as guaranteeing the right to join a union. However, the $12 a week minimum wage was not enough to compensate for the reduction in the maximum hours a worker could work. It amounted to an institutionalization of the stretch-out and a 25% reduction in weekly wages. [17] [18] [19]

The 1934 strike

National leaders of the UTW were reluctant, but the new Southern members began pushing for a strike when it became clear that the NRA code was not going to produce the hoped for improvements in working conditions. [13] [19] Representatives to the union convention voted on August 14 to authorize a strike for the following month. [20] The union demanded recognition from Southern mill owners, a minimum wage of $20 a week, and a reinstatement of workers fired for union activity. [17]

Over 400,000 workers up and down the East Coast went on strike. [17] The South was especially militant: in South Carolina, striking workers organized "flying squadrons" to travel across the state and convince workers at other mills to stop work. By this time, about half of the workers at the Chiquola Mill were part of the UTW. This was notably less than other parts of South Carolina: the management of Chiquola Mill had an unusually high level of control over mill workers' lives (even compared to other mills in the south) and workers feared that joining the union would lead to retribution by the management. [1] Therefore, when Governor Ibra Blackwood mobilized the National Guard and State Highway Patrol against the strikers, he denied Dan Beacham's request for support in Honea Path. [3] [13] Instead, Beacham asked chief of police George Paige to deputize and arm 126 anti-union townspeople. [2]

The strike in Honea Path began on Labor Day. Before the union men arrived, the strikebreakers took up places all around the mill. Some were placed inside the windows and given sticks in addition to rifles. Others manned the roof, where they had set up a machine gun from the First World War. Chief Paige and several patrolmen stood in front of the building with guns. [4]

On the morning of September 6, 100 to 150 workers from nearby Belton joined with 200 workers from Honea Path to picket the Chiquola Mill. [5] They marched around the building, carrying American flags and singing We Shall Not Be Moved and Solidarity Forever. Around lunchtime, a group of non-union workers attempted to enter the mill but were blocked by the picket line. The strikebreakers inside the mill threw sticks down to the non-union workers. According to testimony from Chief Paige, this caused the workers to begin to scuffle with the strikebreakers. [5] At this point, Dan Beacham gave the order to fire, and intense firing began from the mill (although the machine gun jammed). The strikers immediately began to flee, but the firing continued. Coroner J.R. McCoy later found that all seven workers killed had been shot in the back by the strikebreakers. [5] [2] One, Claude Cannon, had to be shot five times (including when he was already on his hands and knees) before he finally succumbed to the bullets. [3]

Aftermath

Honea Path's churches, who were subsidized by the mill owners, refused to allow a funeral for the slain workers to be held on their grounds. [3] [14] Instead, on September 9 the UTW organized a funeral on an open field outside town. Perhaps 10,000 people attended, addressed by George L. Googe from the AFL and John Peel from the UTW. [6] [21]

At the inquest summoned by the coroner, eleven strikebreakers were charged with murder, but as the local magistrate Beacham ensured they were acquitted. When two eyewitnesses testified that he had given the order to fire, Beacham had them arrested and charged with perjury. [3] Dozens more were fired and evicted for participating in the strike or voicing support for the union. [8]

The massacre did not defeat the strike in Honea Path or South Carolina more generally. But larger issues doomed the workers' struggle. The main economic crisis that was affecting the textile industry was overproduction, making a strike ineffective in the short term. [17] [18] A longer strike might have been successful, but the rapid growth of the UTW meant that the union had not accumulated the strike funds it would need to provision such a large number of striking workers for any length of time. [13] [17] The national leadership was unable to keep its promise to feed workers during the strike, and many in the South went hungry. The strike finally came to an end of September 23 after a direct appeal from President Roosevelt. [18] [13] [17] The UTW had none of their demands met, which greatly demoralized workers in Honea Path. [19]

Legacy

Local elites stoked fears of retaliation to prevent open discussion of events. [22] They also spread a (false) rumor that the strikers themselves had fired the first shot, a rumor that was still in circulation well into the 1990s. [23] Mill superintendents continued to dominate the mayorship and unionization in Honea Path stalled. [22]

In 1994, George Stoney led the production of a documentary on the 1934 textile workers' strike called the "Uprising of '34". The film prominently features the Chiquola Mill Massacre. Public screenings of the film spurred conversations in Honea Path that led to the dedication of a small stone marker for the fallen workers in nearby Dogwood Park. [24] The documentary also prompted Frank Beacham, grandson of Dan Beacham, to begin an investigation of the events. [8] In the decades since, however, no commemorations of the event have been organized. [8] [4] [5]

Notes

  1. ↑ Claude Cannon, Lee Crawford, Ira Davis, E. M. “Bill” Knight, Maxie Peterson, C. R. Rucker and Thomas Yarborough. Six died immediately and one died later from wounds. [3] [1] [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honea Path, South Carolina</span> Town in South Carolina, United States

Honea Path is a town primarily in Anderson County, South Carolina and extending into Abbeville County in the northwest part of the state. The population was 3,686 at the 2020 census.

The US Textile Workers' Strike of 1934, colloquially known later as The Uprising of '34 was the largest textile strike in the labor history of the United States at the time, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olin D. Johnston</span> American politician

Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston was an American politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th governor of South Carolina, from 1935 to 1939 and again from 1943 to 1945. He represented the state in the United States Senate from 1945 until his death from pneumonia in Columbia, South Carolina in 1965. He has become infamously remembered for denying clemency to George Stinney, a 14 year-old African American boy who was wrongfully sentenced to death in 1944 after a trial that lasted for one single day, a conviction overturned 70 years later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Textile Workers Union of America</span> Former trade union of the United States

The Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) was an industrial union of textile workers established through the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1939 and merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to become the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) in 1976. It waged a decades-long campaign to organize J.P. Stevens and other Southern textile manufacturers that achieved some successes.

The following is a timeline of labor history, organizing & conflicts, from the early 1600s to present.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York shirtwaist strike of 1909</span> Labor strike

The New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, also known as the Uprising of the 20,000, was a labour strike primarily involving Jewish women working in New York shirtwaist factories. It was the largest strike by female American workers up to that date. Led by Clara Lemlich and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and supported by the National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL), the strike began in November 1909.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibra Charles Blackwood</span> American politician

Ibra Charles Blackwood was the 97th Governor of South Carolina from 1931 to 1935.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1913 Paterson silk strike</span> Work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey

The 1913 Paterson silk strike was a work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey. The strike involved demands for establishment of an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. The strike began in February 1913, and ended five months later, on July 28. During the course of the strike, approximately 1,850 strikers were arrested, including Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loray Mill strike</span> 1929 strike in North Carolina, USA

The Loray Mill strike of 1929 in Gastonia, North Carolina, was a notable strike action in the labor history of the United States. Though largely unsuccessful in attaining its goals of better working conditions and wages, the strike was considered successful in a lasting way; it caused an immense controversy which gave the labor movement momentum in the South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emil Rieve</span>

Emil Rieve was an American labor leader. He was president of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) from 1939 to 1956, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1939 to 1955, and a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1960.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cone Mills Corporation</span> American textile manufacturer

Cone Mills Corporation was an American textile manufacturing company. It produced cotton fabrics such as corduroy, flannel, and denim. The company headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Chiquola may refer to:

The United Textile Workers of America (UTW) was a North American trade union established in 1901.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1907 Skowhegan textile strike</span>

The 1907 Skowhegan textile strike was a labor dispute between approximately 225 mill workers and the owners of the Marston Worsted Mill in Skowhegan, Maine, United States. Declared following the firing of 17 year-old French Canadian-American girl named Mamie Bilodeau, the strike was the first successful strike involving the recently formed Industrial Workers of the World.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Golden (trade unionist)</span> Labor leader in the United Textile Workers of America

John Golden was an American textile worker and trade union leader. He was elected president of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) each year from 1902 until shortly before his death in 1921. At the time of his death, he was declared as important to textile unionism as John Mitchell was to mining unionism.

The 1914–1915 Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills strike was a labor strike involving several hundred textile workers from the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The strike, which involved about 500 millworkers, began on May 20, 1914, and ended almost a year later on May 15, 1915, in failure for the strikers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike</span> 1912–1913 textile workers strike in Little Falls, New York

The 1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike was a labor strike involving workers at two textile mills in Little Falls, New York, United States. The strike began on October 9, 1912, as a spontaneous walkout of primarily immigrant mill workers at the Phoenix Knitting Mill following a reduction in pay, followed the next week by workers at the Gilbert Knitting Mill for the same reason. The strike, which grew to several hundred participants under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), lasted until January the following year, when the mills and the strikers came to an agreement that brought the workers back to the mills on January 6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1922 New England Textile Strike</span> Industry wide labor strike

The New England Textile Strike was a strike led by members of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) principally in the U.S. states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Throughout the duration of the strike, an estimated 68,000-85,000 workers refused to work. Alongside the UTW, the IWW and ATW played major organizing roles within it, with the strike lasting for around 200 days at most mills.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strikes in the United States in the 1930s</span>

Strikes in the United States in the 1930s played a major role in reshaping the economy as it recovered from the Great Depression. Unions gained millions of members for unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)and the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Energized by successful strikes in major industries with the help of New Deal agencies, the unions played a major role in Democratic Party efforts to reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, as well as 1940 and 1944.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Irons, Janet Christine (2000). Testing the New Deal: the general textile strike of 1934 in the American South. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 147–150. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Stoney, George. "Ruth Davis Interview and Honea Path Scenes". Digital Collections: The Uprising of '34 Collections. Georgia State University. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Beacham 2007.
  4. 1 2 3 Riddle, Lyn. "'Bloody Thursday' anniversary passes quietly". Greenville News. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Stoney, George. "Kathy Lamb Interview 1". Digital Collections: The Uprising of '34 Collections. Georgia State University. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  6. 1 2 Wilsbacher, Greg (September 4, 2012). "Honea Path and the End of Summer". Moving Image Research Collections. University of South Carolina. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  7. ↑ Salmond, John (2002). The General Textile Strike Of 1934: From Maine to Alabama. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN   9780826213952 . Retrieved June 8, 2023.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Beacham, Frank. "80th Anniversary of Honea Path Strike". Frank Beacham's Journal. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  9. ↑ Cartledge 2019, p. 60.
  10. 1 2 "Census of Population and Housing". Census.gov. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Southern Labor Archives: Work n' Progress - Lessons and Stories: Part III: The Southern Textile Industry". University Library. Georgia State University. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  12. ↑ Beacham, Frank. "Mill Town Murder: Photo Essay: Chiquola Mill Houses". beachamjournal.com. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Simon, Bryant. "General Textile Strike". South Carolina Encyclopedia. University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  14. 1 2 3 Winant, Gabriel (September 7, 2010). "The revolution the South forgot". Salon. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  15. ↑ Salmon, John A. (1995). Gastonia: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  16. ↑ Stoney, George. "Dee Neely and Kathy Lamb Interviews". University Library: Digital Collections: The Uprising of '34 Collection. Georgia State University. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "1934: Southern Workers Spark Massive Textile Strike". American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO. May 28, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Murray, Jonathan. "Textile strike of 1934". North Carolina History Project. John Locke Foundation. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Hayes, Jack Irby. "New Deal". South Carolina Encyclopedia. University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Strike Threatens in Textile Trade". The New York Times. August 14, 1934. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  21. ↑ Delgado, Frenando (September 9, 1934). "Mass funeral for strike victims-outtakes" (Film). Moving Image Research Collections. Fox Movietone. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  22. 1 2 Brooks, Bryant. "Bloody Thursday, Shooting at Chiquola Mill, Honea Path, SC". Clio: Your Guide to History. Retrieved November 26, 2021.
  23. ↑ Stoney, George. "Filming 'The Uprising of '34'". Southern Changes: The Journal of the Southern Regional Council, 1978-2003. Emory University. Archived from the original on February 26, 2013. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  24. ↑ "77 Years After Bloody Mill Strike, Remembering the Slain". The Electrical Worker Online. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Retrieved November 22, 2021.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.