Oral history interview with Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, June 8, 1979
Subtitle: interview H-0254, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Tullos, Allen, 1950- interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Women textile workers; Textile factories; Employees; Employment; Textile workers; Social conditions; Child labor
Other titles: Interview H-0254, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, June 8, 1979; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Mrs. Osteen talks about her work as a child on her father's farm and in Poe Mill. She spent most of her life living in rural South Carolina in a family of eleven children, her father, stepmother, husband, and six children. Most of the interview deals with the specific tasks involved in working at a textile mill, including responsibilities, and how workers were treated by employers. She also discusses how families handled working in the mill together, common illnesses, wages, and the death of parents. In her experience, families tended to be large and migratory, often working together in mills throughout the region. That changed with the Great Depression, when jobs became so scarce that people were more likely to stay in one town and maintain smaller families.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Oct. 24, 2007).

Interview participants: Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, interviewee; Georgia [daughter], interviewee; Allen Tullos, interviewer.

Duration: 01:00:16.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Mike Millner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 150.2 kilobytes, 110 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series H, Piedmont industrialization, 1974-1980, interview H-0254, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Stephanie Alexander. Original transcript: 33 p.

Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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