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Oral history interview with Lawrence Rogin, November 2, 1975 interview E-0013, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Summary: Born in 1909, Lawrence Rogin grew up in New York with Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Rogin begins the interview by briefly discussing his family background, stressing the involvement of his parents and his aunt in radical politics. In 1926, Rogin entered Columbia University and became active in communist and socialist clubs on campus. In the process, he became increasingly interested in the labor movement and its association with radical politics. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, while he was finishing graduate work in political science, Rogin began to participate directly in the labor movement. He discusses his work at the Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York, and with the Central Labor Union in Reading, Pennsylvania. It was his experience with these two organizations that gave Rogin a firm foundation in labor education. Around 1937, he accepted a position with the Hosiery Workers' Union, and he began to help organize hosiery workers throughout the South. He continued in this position until 1956, during which time he was primarily based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He describes his initial perceptions of the South, his thoughts on the state of the textile industry in that region, and labor education workshops held throughout the South. In addition to outlining mill conditions and assessing particular strikes, Rogin describes the leadership role of such activists as Emil Rieve, George Baldanzi, Scott Hoyman, Alfred "Tiny" Hoffman, Myles Horton, Joe Pedigo, and Roy Lawrence. After leaving the Hosiery Workers' Union in 1956, Rogin worked as the education director of the AFL-CIO and taught at Wayne State University. He concludes the interview with a brief assessment of the importance of labor education and its neglect by the American labor movement.

Electronic resources

Record details

  • Physical Description: electronic resource
    remote
    1 electronic resource
  • Edition: Electronic edition
  • Publisher: [Chapel Hill, N.C.] : University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2007.

Content descriptions

General Note:
Duration: 02:26:38.
Interview participants: Lawrence Rogin, interviewee; William Finger, interviewer.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Title from menu page (viewed on November 26, 2008).
Type of Computer File or Data Note:
Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 236 kilobytes, 268 megabytes.
Original Version Note:
Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series E, Labor, interview E-0013, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Patricia Crowley. Original transcript: 66 p.
Funding Information Note:
Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.
System Details Note:
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
System requirements: Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.
Subject:
Rogin, Lawrence 1909-1988 Interviews
Brookwood Labor College (Katonah, N.Y.)
Textile Workers Union of America.
Employees Education United States
Hosiery workers Labor unions Organizing Southern States
Labor leaders United States
Labor unions and education United States
Labor unions Southern States Officials and employees Interviews
Strikes and lockouts Southern States
Textile industry Southern States
Textile workers Labor unions Organizing Southern States
Textile workers Southern States Social conditions
Genre:
Oral histories.

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