Title: Oral history interview with Dora Scott Miller, June 6, 1979
Description: Dora Scott Miller grew up in Apex, NC, and finished high school before marrying and taking a job at the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company in Durham, where she spent nearly four decades. During her tenure there, Miller watched the company evolve into a racially integrated, unionized company. But much of this interview focuses on her experiences there before World War II, when a non-union workforce primarily consisting of black women worked long hours for little pay under white foremen. Miller and her coworkers kept their mouths shut to keep their jobs, but maintained enough strength to vote in a union when it arrived and to form a supportive community outside of the workplace. This interview should prove a rich source of information for researchers interested in southern industrial work from the perspective of an African American woman.
Subjects: Interviews, Women tobacco workers, African American women employees, Race relations, Farm life, Social conditions, Tobacco industry, Tobacco workers, Health and hygiene, Labor unions, Black Labor unions, Shop stewards, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company
Places: North Carolina, Durham, Apex (N.C.), Apex
People: Dora Scott Miller (1906-1992)