“We were accused of killing both the cotton and textile industries based on our campaigns to raise critical issues of worker health, union representation, environmental protection, and civil rights.”

It may have been us who killed the textile industry, at least according to a number of the cotton mill owners who operated across the South in the 1970s. We were a group of labor, social justice, civil rights, and public health activists who were committed to creating long-term social change and workplace justice in a region steeped in an inward-looking racist and reactionary approach to economic and social development.