Oral history interview with Flake and Nellie Meyers, August 11, 1979
Subtitle: interview H-0133, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Dilley, Patty, interviewer; Meyers, Nellie Mae Workman, 1898?- interviewee; 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; Furniture workers; Textile workers; Women textile workers; Furniture industry and trade; Labor unions
Other titles: Interview H-0133, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Flake and Nellie Meyers, August 11, 1979; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Flake and Nellie (Workman) Meyers were both born around the turn of the twentieth century. Born into a family of farmers and furniture makers, Flake first began to work at the age of sixteen, around 1913, in High Point, North Carolina, in order to help support his family. Flake worked at several furniture manufacturing companies during his career, spending most of his time at the Southern Desk Company. After working several years learning different jobs in the furniture factories, Flake became a foreman in the early 1920s. He describes in vivid detail what it was like to work in the furniture industry, paying special attention to techniques used to make furniture, the role of machinery in the workplace, and relationships between employees and employers. Nellie Workman also grew up in rural North Carolina in a large family. As the oldest daughter, Nellie spent a great deal of time helping her mother raise her nine siblings and tend house. Before her marriage to Flake Meyers in 1922, Nellie worked briefly in the cotton mills in Vale, North Carolina. Flake Meyers' job as foreman in the Southern Desk Company in Conover, North Carolina (where they eventually settled), provided sufficient economic means for Nellie to stay home and raise their children without having to work outside of the home. Together, the stories they tell reveal the nature of living and working in a Southern working community during the early twentieth century.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on December 17, 2007).

Interview participants: Flake Meyers, interviewee; Nellie Meyers, interviewer; Patty Dilley, interviewer.

Duration: 01:59:28.

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 Steve Weiss.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 276.8 kilobytes, 218 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series H, Piedmont industrialization, 1974-1980, interview H-0133, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 60 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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