Rethinking Paternalism: Power and Parochialism in a Southern Mill Village Author(s): Mary Lether Wingerd Source: The Journal of American History , Dec., 1996, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Dec., 1996), pp. 872-902 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2945643 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Organization of American Historians and Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History This content downloaded from 23.30.252.14 on Fri, 26 Feb 2021 15:37:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Rethinking Paternalism: Power and Parochialism in a Southern Mill Village Mary Lethert Wingerd In the restive summer of 1934, waves of worker insurgency shook the textile South. Years of unanswered industrial grievances culminated in a general strike unparal- leled in the region, with over 170,000 southern mill hands ultimately joining ranks in protest. In Durham, North Carolina, the operatives of Mill 1, flagship of the Erwin Mills Company, immediately presented a united front of organized opposi- tion. Picket lines also quickly sprang up around Erwin Mill 2, located eighty miles southeast of Durham in the town of Erwin.