The history and culture of Kannapolis
Driving into downtown Kannapolis, the first things you see are the church steeples.
The churches — First Baptist, First Presbyterian and Kimball Memorial Lutheran — have framed the Kannapolis skyline for more than 100 years and are some of the last links to city’s past.
Rising above the downtown business district, the copper dome of the Core Research Laboratory now dominates the horizon. As the centerpiece of the North Carolina Research Campus, it represents the future of the “City of Looms.”
Where the Core Lab stands today was the site of a masterpiece of the Industrial South — a massive textile mill complex that provided the country with its sheets and towels and in its heyday supplied more than 20,000 jobs. The mill complex itself is gone — fallen under the bulldozers and demolition charges brought on by progress. Rising in its place is a $1.5 billion biotechnology center dedicated to human nutrition research.
What began as Cannon Mills Company in the late 1880s ended as Pillowtex in 2003 with the largest permanent layoff in North Carolina history. About 4,800 people in North Carolina — 7,000 workers nationwide — lost their jobs when Pillowtex filed for bankruptcy. The closure was a harbinger of the collapse of the American textile industry.
Pillowtex shut its doors and faded away, existing only in court documents in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and in the memories of the workers who operated its looms.
Kannapolis and its people are in a state of transformation. Some have benefited from the shift, while others still struggle in a more global economy.
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Building the empire
James W. Cannon, a Concord industrialist, started Cannon Manufacturing Company in 1887 with the help of six investors and $75,000. He opened the first mill in Concord and started spinning yarn. Cannon believed, instead of sending cotton to the mills up north for processing, he could do it closer to the source.
In 1906, Cannon went to the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners with a proposition: He asked them to build a road from Concord to his 600-acre farm near the Southern Railway and Rowan County border. His plan was to build a new textile mill there. He said if they would build the road, he would pay for it.
The commissioners agreed to the proposition, and Cannon began work on his new mill. He constructed a small mill village where his workers could live. Stores opened up. Workers organized churches.
Cannon came up with a name for his new village from the Greek words meaning “city” and “looms.”
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Kannapolis plant, 1906 |
Kannapolis was born.
The elder Cannon died in 1921 and his son, Charles A. Cannon, took over as president of the company. He consolidated nine mills in the area under one name — The Cannon Mills Company. With mills in Cabarrus and Rowan counties, Cannon Mills became the largest employer in the region.
The company provided workers a house to live in, a steady job, income and wholesome recreation. It provided civil services for the village, such as running water and sewer service and police and fire protection.
Thelma Honeycutt was one of 14 children who grew up on a farm near Kannapolis.
“That was all there was back then,” Thelma said. “When you come from a family of 14, you have to go to work to support a family.”
She found work in 1951 in the No. 6 weave room, where she stayed during her 52 years at the mill.
Her husband, Calvin, grew up on a farm in Anson County and moved to Kannapolis in 1952. He worked at the YMCA for 20 years, but that job dried up.
“I had no other choice but to go into the mill,” Calvin said.
Police Chief Woody Chavis grew up in a Kannapolis mill house. His parents worked for Cannon. He said, at shift change you could hear the mill’s whistle for miles around and could set your watch by it.
“Every morning, around 20 minutes to seven, the whistle blew,” Chavis said. “That was indicating to people that it was time to go to work. And at seven o’clock, it blew again, and if you weren’t at work yet, you knew you were late.”
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An aerial view of Cannon Mills in the 1950s. |
At shift changes, after the whistle blew, you could not drive a car into downtown Kannapolis, said Ken Geathers, a City Council member and former mill worker.
“18,000 people came out of that building and stopped traffic for maybe 20 minutes,” Geathers said.
Cindy Huie, a lifelong Kannapolis resident, grew up on the Rowan County side of the city. She never worked in the mill but had family members who did. She said life in Kannapolis revolved around the mill.
“You were either a mill worker or you stayed at home with the children,” she said, “and you were definitely an A.L. Brown football fan.”
Cannon was civic-minded and supported his workers. He expanded the mill village and built the city’s YMCA. He founded Cabarrus County Hospital and oversaw its expansion. He bought some of the first rounds of the polio vaccine to inoculate his workers. He instituted loyalty banquets to honor long-time employees. During the Great Depression, when sales were low, Cannon cut back production and warehoused surplus product so his workers could keep their jobs during hard times.
During his 50-year tenure as head of the company, Cannon oversaw the expansion of the textile company into the world’s largest manufacturer of household textile products. Nearly everyone had Cannon towels in their bathrooms and slept on Cannon sheets.
After World War II, Cannon continued that expansion, and Kannapolis grew with it. In 1960, the mill town 30 miles from Charlotte was the largest unincorporated city in the world with 34,647 residents.
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A 1960 sign welcomes travelers to Kannapolis. |
Mill workers stuck together like family. They lived next to each other. They worked together. They went to church together.
“It was like one great big family,” Thelma said. “And the bossmen, they never turned their snoot up at you. They would talk to you just the same.”
Dane Laney grew up in the mill village. His parents, Arrey and Check Laney, worked in the mill.
“Growing up in the mill village, you always had someone to play with,” he said. “The Baby Boom era was in full bloom in that time. Your closest friends were near you. You cemented these friendships in school, and you played pick-up football in the cold until your nose ran off and your mother called you in, or you weren’t going to get any supper.”
Even away from the mill, workers stuck together.
“Everyone looked forward to Fourth of July,” Huie said, “when everyone got a week off and went to Myrtle Beach. The town would just empty out.”
As the mill grew, so did business in Kannapolis. The Towel City Theatre chain entertained mill workers on Saturdays. The YMCA hosted youth sports leagues. “Idiots’ Circle” became the hangout where the kids showed off their cars on Saturday nights and where NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt learned how to drive.
“It was a great time, and as we go along in life, we appreciate it more and more,” Laney said. “Kannapolis is still today — and Coach (Bruce) Hardin said it and Dale Earnhardt said it, too — we’re just a hard-working, blue-collar town. We take advantage of the best things we can.”
Cannon Mills workers were proud of their jobs and the products they made. The sheets and towels they made were shipped around the world.
Life in Kannapolis was good.
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Cannon Mills in the 1980s |
Changing cultures and union battles
In 1971, Charles Cannon died. After having only two CEOs during its first 80 years of operation, Cannon Mills would have three during the next 10 years.
Soon after, the Cannon family got out of the textile business, and David Murdock, then a millionaire from California who made his money in real estate, bought Cannon Mills in 1982 for $413 million.
Everyone thought, “What would happen now?”
It was a nerve-wracking time for Kannapolis.
The city was moving toward incorporation, which would happen in 1984, but it was not yet standing on its feet. A group of community leaders, lead by the late Kannapolis attorney and former state senator, Carlyle Rutledge, met with Murdock early during his ownership. Rutledge welcomed Murdock to Kannapolis, and Murdock assured them that the Cannon legacy would remain and changes would be slow.
But changes did come.
“The company started evolving then. The company changed from a family-owned company to a corporation,” Geathers said. “A lot of the supervisors and high officials lost their jobs.”
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David Murdock, 1982 |
Murdock moved to modernize the plant — introducing new machines and streamlining the workforce. He tore down the old YMCA building Charlie Cannon built and erected a new one and a senior center on West C Street. He pushed the state to construct Loop Road around the plant. He built Cannon Village as a one-stop shopping center for Cannon products.
Although Murdock brought the company into a new era, many employees felt they weren’t getting the same treatment under his leadership and a push for a union intensified. But, just like Charles Cannon, he worked to keep it out.
In 1934, a nationwide strike stopped production at textile mills across the country. In Concord, the union held demonstrations, but in Kannapolis, machines continued running. Cannon called in the National Guard to keep the union from demonstrating. He posted machine guns on the roofs of the mills as a visible sign of management’s feelings toward unions.
Few Cannon Mills workers demonstrated. Few cared to. For the next four decades, the union stayed away from Cannon Mills because its workers remained loyal to “Uncle Charlie.”
“We didn’t need the union,” Thelma Honeycutt said. “We had everything we needed.”
Mill workers had a house to live in, a steady paycheck and a job as long as they were loyal to the company. It wasn’t much, and workers didn’t live high on the hog, but for many, it was better than how they grew up.
But after Cannon’s death, a new corporate culture began to overtake the paternal family-owned and operated business, and the union saw an opportunity.
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union made its first push into the mill with a campaign in 1974. A company-wide vote shot down the union with 56 percent against.
The union tried again in 1985, this time with more employees leading a 15-month campaign to unionize. Then-owner Murdock went around the mill floors, meeting the workers, in his own campaign to thwart the union.
“I remember Mr. Murdock going through the mill, walking through all three shifts, shaking the hands of workers,” said Lynne Scott Safrit. “He told them that they had everything they needed, that we didn’t need the union at Cannon Mills.”
Safrit, Murdock’s longtime lieutenant, worked as his assistant in Cannon Mills. Now, as president of Castle & Cooke North Carolina, she oversees the development of Murdock’s new project, the North Carolina Research Campus.
The 1985 union vote came and went. Once again, the union lost.
In December of that year, Murdock sold the company to Eden-based Fieldcrest Mills for $250 million. After the sell, Murdock ended the Cannon Mills pension plan, using the funds to buy annuities from a California firm, Executive Life, which were meant ensure future pension payments to employees. He took about $30 million left in the pension plan after the annuity purchases and used it for his take-over of Occidental Petroleum. Executive Life shut down in 1991, leaving pension-holders without monthly checks. To cover the shortfall, Murdock pledged about $1 million to the workers.
Murdock also kept the real estate holdings — including Cannon Village — managed under his release estate firm, Atlantic American Properties.
Murdock continued his company purchases as his company, Flexi-Van Corp., merged with the California-based Castle & Cooke, which owned Dole Foods and was suffering major financial problems at the time. Murdock became chairman and CEO of Castle & Cooke, catapulting him to sole owner of Dole Food Company and Castle & Cooke by 2003.
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Fieldcrest Cannon smokestacks, 1996 |
After Murdock sold the mill to Fieldcrest, executives moved the company’s headquarters to Kannapolis, erected another smokestack at the energy plant and painted “FIELDCREST” and “CANNON” on the 175-foot towers.
Problems followed the companies’ merger, as the corporate cultures didn’t mesh. Workers were being told to do more work but with no increase in pay. Management faced pressures from competition both foreign and domestic.
Ruth Crisco, who started at Cannon Mills in 1972, watched the culture war unfold.
“When Mr. Cannon owned the mill, you didn’t need a union. Everything was being done equally,” Crisco said. “But as we were being bought … benefits were being taken away. You could barely make it; wages were being cut. We needed the union for justice …”
In 1991, mill workers again campaigned to unionize. As pro-union employees filled out cards, management went on the offensive, releasing internal videos with executives speaking out against the union. Fieldcrest Cannon executives hired public relations firm B&C Associates to launch an anti-union campaign in Kannapolis’ black communities.
Ten mill workers were fired because of their pro-union views.
Again the union lost, but in the closest vote tally yet: 3,034 for the union, 3,233 against.
The union believed Fieldcrest Cannon bullied workers during the campaign and took the case to the Nation Labor Relations Board. The board ruled the mill implemented unfair labor practices to squash the organized effort. Fieldcrest Cannon management, under CEO Jim Fitzgibbons, appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In its 1997 opinion, the court said the company implemented a “scored earth, take-no-prisoners” illegal campaign against the union and ordered executives to rehire fired pro-union workers and pay them back wages.
Fieldcrest Cannon sold the company to Dallas-based Pillowtex for $700 million later that year.
Pillowtex, founded in 1954, was one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of bedding. After acquiring Fieldcrest-Cannon, Pillowtex began to corner the market on bed and bath textile products. But the company had taken on a lot of debt in other acquisitions. Pressure began coming from big-box retailers, such as Wal-Mart, to cut prices on sheets, towels and bedspreads pushing profits lower.
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UNITE members, 1999 |
The union — now known as UNITE!, the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees, organized again in 1997 as the company was pushing workers to work hard while cutting benefits to save money. Once again, the union lost its bid, predominantly because older employees such Thelma and Calvin Honeycutt continued to vote against the union.
“I told people that if we voted in the union, they would close the mill,” Thelma said. “And they did.”
“Management told us that if the union was voted in, they would close the mill for six months,” Crisco said, “only the mill didn’t open back up.”
After an energized 1999 campaign, workers passed a union vote and a new collective bargaining agreement for benefits, #### days and wage increases began.
But Pillowtex’s debt load, dismal sales and a failed computer system conversion caught up with the company. Chuck Hansen, Pillowtex’s CEO, resigned in 2000, and the company filed for Chapter 11 protection not long after, citing about $1 billion in debt. During its 2001 bankruptcy reorganization, officials closed Kannapolis Plant No. 4, a mill that made bedsheets. Pillowtex emerged from bankruptcy in 2002, with executives saying its debt had been cut to $200 million.
But Pillowtex, like most of the American textile industry, was still in trouble. The North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 opened up Mexico and Latin America to American textile mills searching for cheaper labor. Big-box retailers were calling for cheaper prices. New, more stable trade relations with China opened the world market to cheaper textile products.
By 2003, Pillowtex began shopping itself to other companies.
Thelma Honeycutt’s and Ruth Crisco’s predictions would prove prophetic.
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comments
Would it be OK to use these photos for a poster for a showing of Where Do You Stand A Story From an American Mill? I am a graphic design student and our class is supposed to design a poster for this showing. It is a non-profit org. and the viewing is free. It’s hard to find photos like these and they would be perfect!
Thank you,
Mary
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