Ella Mae Wiggins

[Tamrin]

This day 1929:

Balladeer and activist Ella May Wiggins and other workers were riding in the back
of an old pick-up truck to a union meeting, when local vigilantes, thugs, and a sheriff's
deputy forced the truck off the road and begin shooting at it. Ella May was killed.

Ella Mae Wiggins

[Excerpts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Linked Above]

Ella Mae Wiggins (September 17, 1900-September 14, 1929) was a union organizer and balladeer who was killed during the Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, N.C.

She became a bookkeeper for the union, which was Communist run, and traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify about labor practices in the South. She also told her story: “I’m the mother of nine. Four died with the whooping cough, all at once. I was working nights, I asked the super to put me on days, so’s I could tend ‘em when they had their bad spells. But he wouldn’t. I don’t know why. ... So I had to quit, and then there wasn’t no money for medicine, and they just died.”

On September 14, 1929, she and other union members drove to a union meeting in Gastonia. They were met by an armed mob, and turned back. They had driven about five miles toward home when they were stopped by a car; armed men jumped out and began shooting. Wiggins was shot in the chest and killed. Her five children were sent to live in orphanages.

Five Loray Mill employees were charged in Wiggins’s murder but were acquitted after less than 30 minutes of deliberation in a trial in Charlotte in March 1930 despite the fact that the crime was committed in daylight and more than 50 people witnessed it.

[Tamrin]

Mill Mother's Lament
by Ella Mae Wiggins

We leave our homes in the morning,
We kiss our children good-bye,
While we slave for the bosses
Our children scream and cry.

And when we draw our money,
Our grocery bills to pay,
Not a cent to spend for clothing,
Not a cent to lay away.

And on that very evening
Our little son will say:
"I need some shoes, mother,
And so does sister May."

How it grieves the heart of a mother
Now everyone must know.
But we can't buy for our children,
Our wages are too low.

It is for our little children,
That seems to us so dear,
But for us nor them, dear workers,
The bosses do not care.

But understand all workers,
Our union they do fear.
Let's stand together, workers,
And have a union here.