Oral history interview with Geddes Elam Dodson, May 26, 1980 interview H-0240, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Summary: At thirteen, Geddes Dodson entered the local textile mill as an employee, and he remained a mill worker for the next sixty years. During that time, he worked a variety of jobs, moving from cleaning up the spinning room to more skilled positions and eventually into work as a machinist, one of the most respected and highly paid positions in the factories. His father had entered the mill as a young man but retained a strong connection to agriculture, owning farmland that he either rented to a tenant farmer or cultivated himself much of his adult life. Nevertheless, his father, mother and all of their children spent most of their lives working. Dodson describes life in a mill village in the 1920s and 1930s, offering examples of how his mother balanced work and family, the way race determined employment, the ways children moved from education into the workforce and the various ways injuries could happen during the workday. In addition, he returns several times to issues of violence and gender, showing how men used physical force to defend their reputations, establish their authority over other men, and protect their women from other men. As an anti-union worker during the 1934 strike, he also offers some insight into the reasons some workers chose to join with the mill owners to fight against the flying squadrons.

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