Will we wait to act until our Constitution has been destroyed, our churches pulled down upon us, our classrooms and courtrooms taken over by self-professed godless men like Fred Beal? Will we wait to act until our children learn and eat and play and sleep alongside the Negro? Will we wait to act until our very voices cry out for mercy in a Russian tongue?
The good people of this community are getting tired of these wops from the east side of New York telling our folks what to do and how to do it. It is time we are being rid of them. We can settle the strike without their aid and suggestions. Get them out of town, and the strike will be settled and in a way that will be satisfactory to all. As long as the union stays here, we shall have trouble, and more serious trouble than any that has yet happened.
Advertisement Paid for by the Council of Concerned Citizens of Gaston County
Chapter Nine
Ella May
Sunday, May 26, 1929
The brief burst of rain that closed the night’s meeting had ended, and Ella and Sophia shuffled and slipped their way along the muddy road away from the headquarters. To their right, dozens of wet canvas tents gleamed against the light of hanging lamps. Out in the dark field, strikers stoked soggy campfires and prepared late dinners.
Ahead of them, thirty or so Bessemer City workers in small groups of twos and threes walked over the railroad tracks, their bodies thrown into momentary silhouette by the lights from Loray, which blazed farther south.
“Well, looky there,” Sophia said. She pointed into the damp woods that ran along the north side of the railroad tracks. An automobile sat parked deep in the trees.
“Looks like a police car,” Ella said.
As they passed, the driver drew on his cigarette, and the faint light was enough for Ella to recognize Officer Tom Gibson behind the wheel. She assumed that the large, round head in the passenger’s seat belonged to Officer Albert Roach. Two others sat in the backseat, but it was too dark and they were too far away for Ella to see them clearly.
“That’s Gibson for sure,” Ella said. “Looks like Roach too. Got a mind to knock on the window, ask Gibson for a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke,” Sophia said.
“And you quit.”
“I reckon we’ll leave them alone then,” Sophia said, but as if unable to resist, she raised her hand and waved. “Hey, boys!” she called. She blew a kiss. Ella laughed.
Ella and Sophia clambered up the rise toward the tracks. Beneath them the strikers’ dark figures had already made their way down the other side of the embankment. “Police are just watching us,” Sophia said. “Just waiting to see if Hampton’s here yet.”
Ella turned back and looked at the police car, saw that it hadn’t moved.
“You think they know he’s coming?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Sophia said.
“Beal doesn’t even know,” Ella said. “What makes you think they know?”
“You saw what the Council put in the paper this morning, and now they’re sitting out here in the dark like a lynching party,” Sophia said. “They know. Somebody’s tipped them off.”
“Police are always out here,” Ella said. “If it ain’t Gibson and Roach it’s somebody else. Tonight’s no different.”
“Well, it feels different,” Sophia said. “Things have changed.”
Ella knew that was true: things had changed. In the twenty-one days since she’d attended her first rally in Gastonia, word of the strike had spread to Bessemer City and other mill towns where workers had grown desperate enough to be curious about the union. The rallies had gotten larger as people from outside Gastonia came to view the crisp tents that housed the evicted Loray strikers, to listen to music, to hear speakers, and, sometimes, to eat free food until the food ran out.
The one truck owned by the union soon proved insufficient, and a Gastonia striker named Anderson Chesley had lent his truck to the cause. They could shuttle more people now, and it was safer to have two trucks on the highway at night.
Ella had changed too. It had only been three weeks since she walked off her job at American and joined the union, but she’d traveled by car to Washington, D.C. She’d given a United States senator a piece of her mind. She’d heard rumors that record companies in Charlotte and Nashville were planning to send music producers to the rallies to record her songs, although none of them had shown up yet. She was beginning to understand the ebb and flow of the strike, the inner workings of the union, and, once she’d gotten Loray’s attention and made a name for herself among the strikers, mill owners, newspapermen, and politicians, she was beginning to understand her role in it all too.
She’d written more songs, sung them at the meetings here in Gastonia and at impromptu rallies elsewhere when she’d been invited. Everywhere she went people asked her to sing the “mill mother song,” the song she’d sung her first night in Gastonia, and “The Mill Mother’s Song” was what she’d begun to call it as well. She’d written it as a love letter to her children, but her heart had turned toward angry protest, and she’d told Sophia that “The Mill Mother’s Song” might be the last ballad she’d ever sing. The songs she sang now were still based on popular melodies, but the lyrics had grown more political: “Two Little Strikers,” “On Top of Ol’ Loray,” “All Around the Jailhouse.”
She spent every day organizing workers in Bessemer City, waiting outside gates during shift changes, handing out leaflets on paydays downtown. Beal had done his best to keep his word about Ella’s pay, and Sophia had done her best to make sure of it. Ella’s pockets and her children’s bellies had been full more often than not, and although the union relief funds were not consistent, the food she’d been able to come by was at least reliable.