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VA · Textile era 1882–2006

Virginia

Dan River and the Tobacco Borderlands

Virginia's textile history concentrated in Danville, on the North Carolina border, where Dan River Mills became one of the largest textile firms in the South. Founded in 1882 as Riverside Cotton Mills, it produced ginghams, sheetings, and other cottons for more than a century. The 1930–1931 Dan River strike was one of the largest Southern textile strikes before 1934, and its defeat foreshadowed the broader failure of Southern textile organizing.

The Dan River Mills White Mill, Danville, Virginia-listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Dan River Mills White Mill, Danville, Virginia-listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Acroterion, "White Mill Danville VA1" (2016). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Riverside Cotton Mills opened in Danville in 1882, founded by local investors and drawing workers from the surrounding tobacco countryside on both sides of the Virginia-North Carolina line. In 1909 it merged with the affiliated Dan River company to form Riverside and Dan River Cotton Mills, with a major complex and mill village at Schoolfield, named for three of the founding brothers. Under president H. R. Fitzgerald, the company adopted an 'Industrial Democracy' plan of employee representation in the 1920s, but wage cuts in 1930 drove workers to the United Textile Workers. About four thousand struck from September 29, 1930, to January 29, 1931; the governor sent the National Guard, courts issued injunctions, and the strike collapsed. Renamed Dan River Mills in 1946, the company employed some fourteen thousand people during World War II and remained a major producer for decades. It entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2004 and in 2006 was acquired by India's Gujarat Heavy Chemicals, which closed the main Danville operations; the Schoolfield smokestacks were imploded in 2008.

What remains

Parts of the Schoolfield and riverfront mill complexes survive in Danville and have been the focus of redevelopment. The Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History holds collections from the Dan River workforce.

Sources

  1. ScholarshipDan River Mills. Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities).
  2. ScholarshipFitzgerald, H. R. (1873–1931). Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities).

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