Oral history interview with Carrie Lee Gerringer, August 11, 1979
Subtitle: interview H-0077, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: DeNatale, Douglas, 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; Child labor; Textile industry; Technological innovations; Social life and customs; Textile workers; Working mothers; Health and hygiene
Other titles: Interview H-0077, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Carrie Lee Gerringer, August 11, 1979; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Carrie Lee Gerringer was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, around 1909. She focuses primarily on what it was like to raise a family and work in the textile industry in Bynum, North Carolina. Gerringer recalls spending more time at household chores than at play during her childhood. She left school at the age of 14 to begin working in the textile mills--an occupation she kept for more than 50 years--and married at the age of 16. She and her husband had six children, one of whom died from leukemia as a child. She discusses at length how it was often difficult for her family to make ends meet: she and her husband juggled shifts in the textile industry so that they would not have to hire extra help with the children, and her husband often took on extra work painting houses. Gerringer offers vivid portraits of working in textile plants.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on February 20, 2008).

Interview participants: Carrie Lee Gerringer, interviewee; Irene Perry, interviewee; Douglas DeNatale, interviewer.

Duration: 01:46:52.

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. 220.8 kilobytes, 214 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series H, Piedmont industrialization, 1974-1980, interview H-0077, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Jean Houston. Original transcript: 54 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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