Please join us for our final virtual 2026 Reed Fink Award Talk: “For the Welfare of the Textile Industry: The Political Activism of Carolina Mill Workers in the 1980s” by Cal Bedenbaugh, PhD. Candidate at University of Georgia, on 10/21 at 2:00pm EST.
Please register for the talk here: https://gsu-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/xRCRb74nRgmYVZfrPALEUQ#/registration
In the 1980s, the textile industry in the Piedmont South was facing its greatest challenge. Cheap, imported textiles from Asia flooded the United States, undercutting manufacturers' profits and putting thousands of millhands in the Carolinas out of work. As more plants closed across North and South Carolina, mill workers rediscovered a tradition of political activism dating to the early twentieth century and pushed Congress to act to save their industry. At the same time, manufacturers across the Carolinas lobbied the federal government to implement import restrictions they called "fair trade," in contrast with the "free trade" mindset of Reagan-allied Republicans. To save the textile industry, mill workers, managers, and unions formed an unlikely, uneasy coalition for the welfare of the industry, combining the history of textile labor activism with the lobbying strength of textile manufacturing to push for trade restrictions throughout the 1980s.