In the fall of 1938, federal minimum-wage law and mechanization combined to erase hundreds of stemming jobs from Wilson tobacco factories.
Wilson Daily Times, 24 October 1938.
“Each year here in Wilson hundreds of negroes leave private employment in the fall to take more lucrative jobs in the factories while hundreds of other negroes who are out of work at the time get work at that time.”
THE MATTER: THE FACTS.
*more lucrative jobs” as mentioned in this article is very misleading…..words have a way of distorting the truth of the matter if one doesn’t know all of the facts.
A better choice of words for this writer should have been…”…take jobs which paid just a little more” ..which is a looong ways from “lucrative”.
ASK ME HOW I KNOW. (read beliw)
THE FACTS:
Both my mother and father ( and hundreds of other Black familes in Wilson in the 1930s – The 1960s ) worked for both private white families, known as “domestic work”, and in the tobacco factories having to switch in and out as described here year end and year out. Wasn’t a lot of ” lucrative” in my house. But God…!!
Yes! Our stories are so important to setting the record straight!