Lewis Hine Photographed Yocona Cotton Mill

In May 1911, photographer Lewis Hine, working for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), photographed employees of the Yocona Cotton Mill in Water Valley, Mississippi.  (See my previous post, Yocona Cotton Mill - A Brief History.) 

Lewis Hine photograph showing Yocona Cotton Mill workers, including approximately eighteen children. (1)

Lewis Hine’s caption: “Nearly the entire force, Yocona Mills, Water Valley, Miss.  Some of the smallest workers not in photo.  The three smallest ones in front row hang around and help some.  Baby doesn’t work, – yet.  The rest are steady workers.” 

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Identifying Workers

The 1910 Yalobusha County census may help identify workers in the photograph.  The census record is very light and therefore difficult to read, but I believe I have deciphered the following family names: Bilbro (?), Dugard (?), Eubanks, McDowell (?), Mason, Morgan, Murphy, Phillips, Ray, and Sanders. According to the census, Mr. Charles E. Romberger was superintendent of the mill, Mr. Gore was assistant superintendent, and Joe A. Hamby (?) was foreman. 

The census also listed the following jobs: spinner, spooler, thread twister, doffer, ballwinder, and picker.

Note: If you can identify any of the people in the Lewis Hine photograph above, please post a comment below by clicking on the “comments” link.

 

Child Workers

Notice the row of children in front.  Despite their age, these children worked at the mill and they are the reason Lewis Hine came to Water Valley.  In 1908, the NCLC hired Lewis Hine to travel throughout the United States taking pictures of child workers in cotton mills, canneries, farms, and coal mines.  The NCLC used Hine’s photographs in magazine articles, newspapers, and traveling exhibits to increase public awareness of child labor and push for reform legislation.

 

More

Visit the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, enter “Water Valley” in the search box, and click the Search button to view all five Lewis Hine photographs of the Yocona Cotton Mill.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     . 

Sources:

 (1) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?nclc:5:./temp/~pp_85AF::displayType=1:m856sd=nclc:m856sf=02107:@@@mdb=nclc. (accessed 29 Sep 2008).

Yocona Cotton Mill – A Brief History

The Yocona Cotton Mill, also called Yocona Mills or Yocona Twine Mill, was located in Water Valley, Mississippi, from the 1880s until it burned in April, 1926.

According to various descriptions in Water Valley newspapers and Sanborn insurance maps, the mill produced yarn, batts, mop cord, and twine.  It employed anywhere from 50 to 200 people.

The Yocona Cotton Mill was located in the north end of Water Valley – just north of North Court Street.  It was east of the Illinois Central Railroad tracks and just west of a street called College Street.  (Today College Street is the part of Jones Street that curves into North Court.)  It appears that the current street called Campus Drive and/or the houses along Campus Drive may have been built on top of the remnants of the mill.

The mill was started and owned by local investors, primarily the Wagner family, a prominent family in Water Valley.  Charles E. Romberger was the superintendent of the mill for many years.

I will soon post photographs of the mill taken by famed photographer Lewis Hine in May 1911.  Until then, check out A Young Workforce In 1911 Was Under Scrutiny by Jack Gurner, Jr., of the North Mississippi Herald newspaper.

If you have any information about the mill or the people who worked there, please respond.

“The Dust Bowl” – “Leaving South Dakota”

Here is an example from “The Dust Bowl” exhibit showing a 1930s FSA photo with a 1970s follow-up.  (See my earlier post.) 

The following photo called “Leaving South Dakota for a new start in the Pacific Northwest” was taken by Arthur Rothstein on July 18, 1936.

The following photo was taken in July 1979 by Bill Ganzel.

The woman on the left in both pictures is Marie Braught Johnson.  She tells her story:

“My dad used to walk the floor when those dust storms were blowing and say, ‘There’s a lot of real estate exchanging hands today.’ The year before we left, my dad had a corn crop going pretty good. The grasshoppers hit, and dad went to town and bought corn knives for all us kids. He figured if we’d get that corn chopped down and piled up for fodder, the grasshoppers would leave it alone. [Crying.] Well, they didn’t. We worked, butter we couldn’t keep ahead of them. They ate it right in the shock. They ate every bit of it. I don’t even like to think about those days. We had friends who had come out to Oregon the year before, and they’d write back what a great country it was. There was grass up to the cow’s belly, and there was fruit trees for the picking. And there was work in the fruit orchards. We had nothing, came with nothing.

“We go back to South Dakota every once in a while to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. No way! No way! I just get that feeling every time I go back, like it used to be. I know it’s not quite that bad any more, but … no way. I tell Vern and Flora all the time they should have stayed out here.”

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

This example was taken from the “The Dust Bowl” exhibit on Texas Humanities Web site at:

 http://www.humanities-interactive.org/texas/dustbowl/

“The Dust Bowl” photography exhibit – a great idea to copy

I went to see “The Dust Bowl” photography exhibit (see earlier post) and really enjoyed it.  It’s fairly small, but effective.

The exhibit is based upon photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, and others when they worked for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s.  Then, in the 1970s, Bill Ganzel, a photographer from Nebraska, saw the photos and wondered what became of the people in them.  He asked himself, “Did they go to California?”  “Did they prosper?”  “Did they return?”  So he went in search of the people and some answers. 

As he found the individuals, now forty years older with a lot of stories, he photographed them again (sometimes in the same locations) and interviewed them.

That’s how the exhibit is layed out.  First, there is the photo from the 1930s.  Then a photo from the 1970s.  Then an excerpt from the interview.  There are about 14 of these groupings.   (In my next post, I will show an example.)

I loved seeing the “after” pictures and reading the stories.  So often, as I’ve looked at similar photographs, I’ve wondered what happened to the people.  

This is an idea that can be copied in many forms of public history – whether it’s more exhibits of FSA photos like this one – or community history where someone follows up on a local news story, school, church, or sports team from the early 1900s - or family history. 

There are so many stories to learn from.  I just hope that the complete collection of Mr. Ganzel’s oral histories have been captured in an archives somewhere.  

“The Dust Bowl” photography exhibit opens Jan 17, 2007, at Davis Library

“The Dust Bowl” photography exhibit will be on display at the Davis Library (directions) in Plano, Texas, Jan 17 – Feb 7, 2007.  The exhibit tells the story of great dust storms that swept across the Great Plains region of the United States during the 1930s – and the impact on the people who lived there.

The “Dust Bowl” refers to the drought-ridden land of the Midwest where farmers planted so much land in wheat, there wasn’t enough native ground-cover left to hold the soil in place.  The result was massive storms of dust whenever winds came.

Ian Frazier, in his book Great Plains describes the first great storm cloud:

“black at the base and tan at the top, rose from the fields of eastern Colorado and western Kansas and began to move south.  Inside the cloud darkness was total … People in the cloud’s path thought the end of the world had come…” 

A companion Web site provides additional information:

• photo gallery
• articles about the photographers and the Dust Bowl era
• student learning activities

The exhibit is sponsored by Texas Humanities (formerly the Texas Council for the Humanities.)

Bound for Glory: America in Color

 Marion Post Wolcott, A cross roads store, bar, “juke joint,” and gas station in the cotton plantation area, Melrose, La., June 1940, FSA/OWI Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. 

Another up-coming event I want to see is a photography exhibit called “Bound for Glory: America in Color” at the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth.  It runs until November 12, 2006.

Bound for Glory is a collection of color photographs (versus the black and white photos we are used to seeing) taken between 1939 and 1943 of small-town and rural America during the depression.  The photographs were taken just after the invention of color film by photographers such as Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott.

According to the press release by the Amon Carter Museum, the photographs were part of the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information and played an important part in our country’s history:

“The original goal of the government project was to record, through documentary photographs, the ravages of the Depression on America’s rural population and was intended to spur Congress and the American public to support government relief efforts. “

I first saw the Online Exhibition of Bound for Glory on the Library of Congress Web site.  It caught my attention for two reasons.  First, the color photographs themselves were striking.  Second, the page loaded very quickly.  Normally, to see images of this quality requires a long download time and I end up leaving the site. 

Can’t wait to see the photographs in person.

Here’s information about Visiting the Amon Carter Museum.