Vera Buch Weisbord

This may be the most crowded pamphlet I've ever seen. It's only 32 pages, yet it tries to combine a biography of Ella May Wiggins, a campaign for labor rights, and a campaign for women's rights. A lot gets crowded out.

It's perhaps worth noting that it was put out by a National Organization for Women chapter. That explains the women's rights part, but I wonder if the national organization would have wanted something quite so radical.

To be sure, Ella May Wiggins was a radical -- one of the most boisterous members of a local garment-makers' union that was affiliated with the Communist Party. Wiggins -- in North Carolina, in 1929! -- was a feminist who worked with Black members of the community and lived, fairly openly, with a man who wasn't her husband. Very modern indeed -- not that the pamphlet gets into all of that.

It doesn't even get her name right, calling her "Ella Mae Wiggins." But "May" was her maiden name, not her middle name; "May" is the correct spelling. Makes you wonder how far to trust the rest of the biography. Not that there is much real biography, given all the things that have to fit in these pages -- but there are some reminiscences you won't see elsewhere.

Wiggins deserves a biography -- and has one, by her great-granddaughter, Kristina Horton; it's called Martyr of Loray Mill. There are also books about the Loray Mill/Gastonia strike in which she was assassinated, such as John A. Salmond, Gastonia 1929. There is a lot about Ella in there, as well as history of the strike. Since those books are longer, more on-topic, more available, and cheaper (getting a copy of this booklet cost me far more than it was worth), it's probably smart to start with one of them. If that whets your appetite for more, you can always try to hunt down a copy of this.… (lisätietoja)