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GASTONIA STRIKE

GASTONIA STRIKE. Soon after Fred E. Beal, of the National Textile Workers Union, arrived in Gastonia, North Carolina, to organize textile mill workers, a strike was called to secure union recognition. Local police frequently raided the meetings of the mill workers. On 7 June 1929 the Gastonia chief of police, O. F. Aderholt, was killed while attempting to disband a strikers' meeting, and in the fighting that followed, seven strikers were reported killed. Beal, reputedly a member of the American Communist Party, and six other men were arrested, tried, and convicted of murdering Aderholt; released on bail, all fled to Russia. Beal later returned and was arrested in 1938; he was extradited to North Carolina to serve his prison term.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Salmond, John A. Gastonia, 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

C. H. Hamlin/A. R.

See also Clothing Industry; Strikes; United Textile Workers.