Acting on their threats, North Carolina forces of ‘law and order’ attempt to kill those leading a strike at Gastonia’s Manville-Jenckes’ mill. The eyewitness accounts by union comrades naming the murderers of mill worker, single-mother, and National Textile Workers organizer Ella May Wiggins, shot when returning from a union meeting on September 14, 1929 in Gastonia, North Carolina. Wiggins came to life in the strike, by her own admission, writing songs for the workers and going to Washington to testify before Congress. She left five orphans.

‘Bosses’ Gunmen Kill Woman Mill Worker’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 164. September 16, 1929.

GASTONIA BOSSES’ GUNMEN KILL WOMAN MILL WORKER; ALL WORKERS OUT TO MASS FUNERAL ON TUESDAY!

ARMED FASCISTS AMBUSH WORKERS ON WAY FROM THE UNION MEETING; VOLLEY KILLS ELLA MAY WIGGINS

County Solicitor Rhodes Identified Leading Murderers; Not Arrested, Six Other Killers Out on Light Bonds; I.L.D. Reporters Jailed Manville-Jenckes Committee of 100, and Local Reactionaries Break Meeting; Workers Planning More Mass Demonstrations

BULLETIN.

GASTONIA, N.C., Sept. 13. The National Textile Workers’ Union is planning a mass funeral to take place in Bessemer City for Ella May Wiggins. The forces that rule Gaston County are attempting to rush the funeral through immediately to prevent a mass demonstration of the thousands of textile workers who are outraged at the murder. Indignation is mounting high throughout the textile counties of North Carolina.

***

The National Textile Workers’ Union has called upon every worker in every mill, shop and factory in the textile region of the Piedmont district to throw down his tools, leave off all work on Tuesday—and attend the funeral of Ella May Wiggins. Murdered Saturday by the thugs of the textile mill bosses. All out Tuesday! To the funeral of our martyred dead!

***

GASTONIA, N.C., Sept. 15. Ella May Wiggins, one of the most active National Textile Workers’ Union organizers, a worker from Bessemer City, was trapped and deliberately murdered by mill owners’ gunmen while riding in a truck with 20 other Bessemer City workers who had been trying to travel to the South Gastonia mass meeting Saturday. County Commissioner C.J. Rhodes was identified as among the assassins.

The mass meeting was advertised after Hugo Oehler, Southern organizer of the National Textile Workers’ Union, and others had been set upon by an organized gang of some 300 of the Manville-Jenckes Committee of 100 and local reactionary elements incited by them a week ago.

Sheriff Lineberger of Gaston County had practically advertised to the world that he would condone any murderous action the mill owners desired to take to prevent the organization of the Pinckney mill in South Gastonia, when he stated last Thursday that, “if the meeting were held, he would be unable to prevent a lynching,” and that the only way to stop those people in South Gastonia “is to call off the mass meeting.”

Starting from the Loray mill, and under the leadership of bosses in the mill, the Manville-Jenckes Committee of 100 Saturday afternoon paraded to the speaking grounds in South Gastonia before the hour set for the meeting. They were accompanied by several hundred local reactionaries—businessmen and hangers on of the mills, many of them with cars.

They threw armed guards out on all of the roads to the speaking grounds, and abusively drove back with threats of death workers attempting to come to the meeting.

Ella May Wiggins, mother of five children, an active organizer and speaker at all union and International Labor Defense or Workers International Relief meetings in this part of North Carolina, was in a truck with 20 other Bessemer City workers. When the truck from Bessemer City neared South Gastonia, it was met by the armed guards, and the driver forced to return the way it had come. It was followed by cars loaded with armed mill owners’ gunmen.

When the truck had proceeded some distance, a car owned by one F.T. Morrow cut in ahead of it and forced it to stop. One carload of assassins then swept past it, pouring a volley of shots into the closely packed workers standing in the truck. One bullet struck Ella May Wiggins in the right breast and inflicted a wound from which she died within a short time.

L.J. Baumgartner, who was seated beside the driver of the truck, declares that Morrow deliberately headed it off, and slowed it down, to give the murderers a stationary target.

Solicitor Carpenter, who, on the evidence of the victims kidnapped, led a Manville-Jenckes gang that took R.M. Lell, Ben Weis and C.D. Saylor out of their boarding house Tuesday with intent to lynch them, and actually did beat Wells nearly to death, is now pretending to head a coroner’s jury probe of the killing of Ella May Wiggins.

George B. Linglefoot, the driver of the truck, testified before the jury:

“One automobile cut in ahead of us and forced us to run into a sedan and throw it into the ditch. Two shots were fired and Mrs. Wiggins was shot. Later there were other shots fired. I saw ten or twelve men with guns and rifles.”

Others Beaten.

After the truck was fired upon an attack was made from other cars, and Hobart White, a young mill striker, received a blow that broke his arm. Another young striker, Mary Goldsmith, had a hole torn in her lip.

At the coroner’s hearing, Dave Murray, another striker in the car, identified C.J. Rhodes, a county commissioner, and one of the bosses’ agents in the Bessemer mill named Pell as being among the assassins.

As a result of identification by those in the truck, the county administration was forced to arrest six of the members of the black hundred Loray and South Gastonia mill bosses’ gunmen who did the shooting. But they are out on only $1,000 bail, though charged with murder, while the Gastonia case victims, charged with assault, are held on $1,500 bail each.

Arrest Driver Too.

Those arrested are: L.M. Sossman, Will Lunchford, Lowery Davis, Theodore Sims, Troy Jones, and F.C. Morrow. Along with them, Lingerfelt, who drive the unionists’ truck, was also arrested, and held on $1,000 bonds, evidently to make it appear that there was a fight instead of a deliberate and cowardly murder, by plot and prearrangement.

J.D. McLellan testified, “I heard the guns pop just as he hit, a car pulled opposite the truck and went on by.”

The shot that killed Mrs. Wiggins was fired from this car.

The only other woman occupant of the truck was Mary Goldsmith Jones, 17. She was standing very near Mrs. Wiggins when the shot was fired.

“The jar of hitting sort of throwed us all together but I saw a man in the field standing and shooting. Bullets was aflying every which way so I ducked afore they shot me,” Mrs. Jones said.

To the question of the solicitor asking if she had been shot she replied, “No sir, I warn’t shot but someone hit me on the chin.”

Breathed Only Few Times.

Charlie Schope, who helped carry Mrs. Wiggins to a nearby house said, “When she hollered we jumped out and me and Roy Carpenter carried her to the porch. She breathed several times and it was 15 of three when she made the last gasp for I took out my watch to see.” Willard Sellers said he ran from the shooting scene because “bullets were flying all around.” All testified that a massed attack from other cars followed the shooting.

Eyewitness Account.

One of the unionists on the truck gave the following account of the shooting:

“When we passed the railroad on the way to the union headquarters, I saw some of the Loray Committee of 100 on the lookout. They immediately turned and ran to Franklin St. Before we could get away from the union headquarters, about 50 cars arrived. The thugs jumped out, pointed guns at us, and ordered us to beat it or they would “kill every god damn union bastard.” The driver started the truck and they followed us close. We started to run toward the union place, but their autos cut in and blocked the way, covering us with guns all the time. When we were forced to stop for a red traffic light, some of them tried to drag the driver off his seat.

“Then he started again, and shot head, going back toward Bessemer City. But the thugs’ cars caught up with us again and several cars passed us. When we got to the bridge, five cars passed over first and stopped, two on each side of the road, and one in the center, just ahead of us. We were going on top speed and could not stop.

“Our truck smashed into their car, wrecking both. We were thrown to the ground and started running across the field. We were unarmed and unprepared to protect ourselves against such a large gang. They jumped out of their cars and started shooting at us. There was a volley of shots and Ella May fell dead.”

Bulwinkle Aids Murderers.

Liston Oak, locked in the jail cell over night, could hear Major Bui-winkle, attorney for the Loray mill and member of the prosecution in the Gastonia case of 16 workers slated for electrocution or long prison terms, quizzing George Lingerfelt, the driver of the truck. Bulwinkle is defending Fred Morrow, Loray mill hireling who drove the car that stopped the truck, so the murdering could begin. Bulwinkle immediately framed an alibi for Morrow, saying that he was “on the way to Bridgewater to attend a week-end party.”

Arrest I.L.D. Reporters.

In another automobile, approaching the meeting place, was Liston Oak, Gastonia publicity director of the I.L.D.; Margaret Oak, his wife, and another man driving the car. They were stopped by police, searched, and the men were arrested on the charge of carrying concealed weapons. They are now out on bail. An attempt was made to kidnap William F. Dunne and Hugo Oehler, but this failed.

Workers Aroused.

The textile workers of this vicinity are so far from being terrified by the outbreak of murder and violence Saturday that they are already planning larger mass meetings throughout the surrounding country, determined to make the organization drive of the National Textile Workers Union, and the October 13 Southern Textile Workers Conference in Charlotte such a powerful reality that the system of starvation in the mills and slaughter for daring to strike will come to an end.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n164-NY-sep-16-1929-DW-LOC.pdf