Customer Reviews

Millways of Kent (Southern Classics)

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If you're interested in sociology, or in the culture of the South, this book is worth reading. It's a sociological study of the types of people who worked in textile mills in an unnamed medium-size city in an unnamed Southern state in the late 1940s/early 1950s. The author, John Kenneth Morland, lived in the mill community for an extended period of time (almost a year) while observing the interactions amongst the mill workers, and between them and the other segments of society (the mill "townies" and the rural farming society from whence came the mill workers). Morland writes well enough that the prose is not stultifyingly academic, and the statistical tables are numerous enough to illustrate the points being made, but don't overwhelm the book. So, if you're of Southern descent and wish to learn a little about how your grandparents or other relatives may have lived in the mill culture (which extended from the late 19th century to the mid 1970s), then this book is worth reading. I'm looking forward to reading the companion volumes, which examine the African-American society of the time, and the remnants of the plantation culture, as soon as I can find those out-of-print books.

I was born in York in 1949 one month after the author completed his observations of the mill villages. My first home was in the American Thread mill village in Clover (Blossom in the narrative). When I graduated from York High School in 1967 I was totally unaware of this study, even though I probably knew some of the younger people and a few of the older folks interviewed. In 1964 York had not changed much. The older "blue bloods" noted in the book probably had died off, but their children, likely in their 40's, were still around and pretty much carried on their traditions. As a mill village person by birth I did not know of their traditions or prejudices directly, other than being told to go to the back door to collect for the local newspaper, which I delivered to all segments of York culture. Even in the mid to late 1960s, people in the Cannon Mills village were clearly viewed with derision by the "town" people, but by then my family had become what is termed in the book as "New People", having relocated to York in 1964 from nearby Rock Hill, where my father had worked his way into a foreman's position.

I know from first hand observation that this series of books accurately portrays the life of small town southern piedmont culture as it existed through the 1960s. There were separate facilities for African-Americans, who were not allowed in the "white" sections of restaurants and were forced to sit in the balcony of the movie theater. By the mid-1960s, while charming on the exterior, there was always an undercurrent of desperation in the lower segments of society, including the mill people as well as the black people. It was ingrained into the psyche of many of us to fear the police, who did not spare the nightstick when dealing with suspected criminal activity, no matter how minor the activity may have been. I was even told by family members that I should not aspire to become an attorney, because "we just can't do that". I am sure that the black people in town were much more denigrated, and had little power before the culmination of the Civil Rights movement.

York has made great strides over the past 40 years, but the charm has gone, the way of the downtown merchants and business people, many of whom have been replaced by the super Walmart. I visit only once or twice a year, and always notice the difference of what was- a small town where one did not lock his or her car or home doors, to a very small part of the urban Charlotte sprawl. Other than the blatant discrimination some elements of life were better then.