July 17, 1934

On July 17, 1934, leaders of the Alabama branch of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) called for a general textile strike. By June 1934, there were more than 250,000 UTW members. It was the height of the Great Depression, and more than 4,000 textile workers in Huntsville, Alabama, walked off the job. The workers’ bold actions spurred a textile strike that spread from Alabama to Maine. The strikers fought for better working conditions, salaries and rights. The move triggered a national strike of textile workers that quickly spread beyond the South’s cotton mills, leading to the largest labor conflict in U.S. history. The mill industry in Huntsville did not rebound until World War II.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Some of the spinners in Pell City Cotton Mills, grouped for a photograph by the overseer, E.A. Thompson, superintendent of the mill and mayor of Pell City; November 1910. (Lewis Wickes Hines, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Young girl working in Anniston Yarn Mills, Anniston, November 1910. (Lewis Wickes Hines, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The July 12, 1934, textile workers strike at the Dwight Cotton Mill was the first in a string of strikes that led to the largest labor conflict in U.S. history. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Company housing near a cotton mill in Gadsden, Etowah County, in December 1940. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress, photograph by John Vachon)

Noon hour at the Dwight Manufacturing Co., Alabama City, November 1914. (Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hines, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

United Textile Workers of America truck in front of Samuel Gompers Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1935. (Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Young sweeper working in Anniston Yarn Mills, November 1910. (Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hines, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.