Former UNC Charlotte history graduate student David Murphy and myself were recently awarded a $17,000 grant to fund the creation of a mural on the history of North Charlotte textile workers and their labor actions between 1919 and 1934. The work will be titled “Let’s Stand Together, Workers, and Have a Union Here” which was the last line of the song “Mill Mother’s Lament,” a song written and performed by Ella May Wiggins, a Gastonia, NC mill worker and labor activist who was gunned down by anti-labor vigilantes in 1929. There are currently no public artistic representations of these Charlotte strikes in the NoDa (North Davidson) arts district neighborhood where the strikes took place.
We are currently looking for muralist to complete the work. You can find the full request for proposals here.
