Gastonia (N.C.)

Claude and Mabel Helton talk about working conditions in the mills, the treatment of women textile workers, and the introduction of African American textile workers in the mills. Stoney also shows them footage of pickets in Gastonia, N.C. and New England.

Helton shows Stoney the areas where strikers picketed and where union members lived. Helton and Moore discuss the blacklist and the changes in wages and hours as a result of the New Deal.

Helton discusses union local meetings, the mill manufacturers blacklisting union members, and the assistance that the union local gave to blacklisted textile workers.

Elaine Pruitt and George Stoney talk to Made about a railroad station near the Hanes Town mill village. Ernest Moore talks about union organization efforts. Ruby Moore discusses how she managed her household while working at the mill. Friday talks about the African American experience in the mills and the exclusion of African Americans from joining the union.

Moore discusses efforts made by the Communist Party to organize in the South. The Loray Mill strike of 1929 is described by Moore, including the murder of Orville Aderholt, police chief of Gastonia, N.C. Moore talks about the end of the American Textile Union in the aftermath of the '29 strike and subsequent murder trials and increased distrust of unions. The interview is supplemented with information from E.W. "Bob" Passmore.

Moore talks about what the mill village and the surrounding business used to look like, a Labor Day parade in Gastonia on the first day of the strike, and strikers' activities.

Moses uses his radio show to help Stoney reach out to and find textile workers from the Loray Mill, particularly African American workers. Moore drives Stoney and his crew around the area around the Loray Mill and discusses things such as the Labor Day parades and the businesses that were previously in the area. Passmore shows the filmmakers and Ernest Moore around the Firestone Mill, which was previously called the Loray Mill at the time of the General Textile Strike of 1934.