by Bryant Simon
Steve Kantrowitz, Bill Deverell, and Doug Flamming taught me everything I needed to know about the possibilities of a text message or a quick note. On a Thursday at 3:30 p.m. or a Sunday at 8:45 a.m. or during the Duke-Carolina game, they would write a few short words to check in and remind me of the power of our connections.
To me, every book has a soundtrack, and John Coltrane (that Hamlet man) and Jason Isbell provided the music for this project.
To my West Philly people, to the boys at Donna’s and the families crowded around Local 44 afterwards, to the dreams of shore houses bought with lottery tickets, to the bouncing of basketballs in the alley and Little League dreams that came true, to Christmas Eve and Super Bowls in various living rooms, you carried way, way more for me and my family than any of you can know.
Faith, I trust, is what connects joy and grief, and my faith is in my friends and family. In my brothers, Steve, John, and Jeffrey, sisters, Libby, Rachel, and Jessica, and sister (in-law) Margo, who always, and I mean always, stand with me. To my real brother Brad, thanks. Maria Reardon is the kindest and warmest person I know and that just helps. And to my momma, the best momma. We are still trying to figure out what to do now. We really are, and I guess it doesn’t matter if it ever makes sense. But we have each other and that makes perfect sense, right?
What also makes perfect sense is the “loves” of Eli, Benjamin, and Ann Marie. It was either Eli or Benjamin, I can’t remember which one of them, who first started to say the word “loves” when he left the house in the morning or checked in on his phone. Now it is the word that the four of us say to each other all the time. It is our word, and somehow, it gets at the loud, fussy, cantankerous, and fierce love(s) that hang over our house and last much, much longer than twenty-four frames. I will, I promise, multiply these pieces of loves and carry them back to you forever.
NOTES
Abbreviations used in the endnotes:
ACU—American Conservative Union
GSU—Georgia State University
NCOSHP—North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Project
SHC—Southern Historical Collection
SHSW—State Historical Society of Wisconsin
UFCW—United Food and Commercial Workers Union
UNC—University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
UNCC—University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Introduction
1.This account of Goodwin’s life and what she saw and heard and experienced on the day of the fire is based on multiple author interviews with Goodwin. Information taken from sources other than these interviews will be noted below. For additional information on Goodwin’s job history, see Steve Riley, “A Betrayal of Trust,” Raleigh News and Observer, December 11, 1991. For more information on African American women in the poultry industry, see Kathleen C. Schwartzman, The Chicken Trail: Following Workers, Migrants, and Corporations Across the Americas (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 28; and LaGuana Gray, We Just Keep Running the Line: Black Southern Women and the Poultry Processing Industry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014). (A note on author interviews used in this book: I conducted all of my interviews either in person or over the phone between August 2011 and February 2017.)
2.On Imperial’s bathroom policy, see “Testimony by Mary Bryant,” June 1992, NCOSHP, SHC, Chapel Hill, NC; and Ben Stocking, “Life and Death at Imperial,” Raleigh News and Observer, December 8, 1991. For a more general account on the regime of bathrooms and bodily control, see Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2014), 18.
3.Doug Stark, “The South’s Poultry Plants Thrive,” Baltimore Sun, September 8, 1991.
4.Author interview with Annette Zimmerman. She remembers Goodwin telling her this unfinished story about an arrest on the morning of the fire.
5.Author interview with Ada Blanchard.
6.Author interview with William Morris. On the problem of the parts used to fix the line, see “Lack of Spare Parts May Have Led to Fatal Fire,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1991; and U.S. Department of Labor Worksheet, Inspection 18479204, December 30, 1991, in author’s possession.
7.Department of Labor Investigation, miscellaneous reports, including accounts about Gagnon’s aptitude for fixing things, previous experience with this problem, and Brad Roe’s interventions over the intercom in author’s possession; and Greg Trevor and Paige Williams, “Worker: Repairers Left Fryer On,” Charlotte Observer, September 10, 1991. Martin Quick, who worked in maintenance, also talked about Gagnon’s aptitude for fixing things and about Brad Roe’s cursing at him to get stuff done and done quickly. See author interview with Martin Quick. Obituary for John Gagnon, n.d., Folder, Imperial, Richmond County Historical Society, Rockingham, NC.
8.Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, “The Tragedy at Imperial Food Products, December 1991,” Serial No. 102-N, p. 3; and “Maintenance Worker: Burners Routinely Left On During Fryer Repairs,” Richmond County Daily Journal, September 10, 1991.
9.Author interviews with Loretta Goodwin. Goodwin Testimony, “Hearing on HR 3160, Comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Reform Act,” September 12, 1991, Serial No. 102-47, pp. 39–41.
10.For more on Gagnon and the maintenance crew replacing the hose, see Bobby Quick’s Testimony, “Hearing on HR 3160, Comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Reform Act,” September 12, 1991, Serial No. 102-47, pp. 100–101; and Trevor and Williams, “Worker: Repairers Left Fryer On.”
11.For an explanations of what happened to start the fire, see Jack Yates, “Chicken Processing Plant Fires, Hamlet North Carolina (September 3, 1991), North Little Rock Arkansas (June 7, 1991),” (Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency), available at www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/tr-057.pdf; and “Imperial Foods Processing Plant Fire, Hamlet, MC, September 3, 1991,” Box, Imperial Fire, Hamlet City Hall, Hamlet, NC.
12.For some additional information on the fire, see “Fatal Plant Fire Leaves Children Without Parents,” Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1991.
13.On the impact of carbon monoxide, see U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Carbon Monoxide,” available at www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002804.htm. For accounts of the fire full of telling details, see Paige Williams, “Seven Years of Silence,” Charlotte Observer, October 25, 1998; and Yates, “Chicken Processing Plant Fires.”
14.This conversation was reported by Jim Schlosser, “‘We Are Going to Die’: Plant Inferno’s Survivors Relive the Horror,” Greensboro News and Record, September 8, 1991. Additional details come from an author interview with Calvin White. On the timing of things that day, see “Statement from Robin Leviner,” a Hamlet firefighter, Box, Imperial Fire, Hamlet City Hall, Hamlet, NC; and Yates, “Chicken Processing Plant Fires.”
15.Goodwin’s account of the cries she heard came from “Survivor Tells Panel of Screams for Help in Plant Fire,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1991.
16.Author interview with Calvin White, who recalled the detail about the Trojan tractor.
17.That last detail about coughing up soot comes from C.E. Yandle, “Lawmaker Assails States’ OSHA Programs,” Raleigh News and Observer, September 13, 1991.
18.Schlosser, “‘We Are Going to Die.’”
19.“Hearing on HR 3160, Comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Reform Act,” September 12, 1991, Serial No. 102-47, pp. 39–41.
20.Department of Labor Investigation, Goodwin Interview, in author’s possession. This interview is redacted, but I determined based on my conversations with Goodwin that it is, in fact, her testimony. For more of Goodwin’s account, see Yandle, “Lawmaker Assails States’ OSHA Programs.” For some pushback on her account, see “Officials Question Report of Living in Body Bags,” Richmond County Daily Journal, September 13, 1991. Reporters later revealed that the body bags could only be opened from the outside, which seemed to challenge Goodwin’s account, but she remained firm in her retelling. Ha
mlet mayor Abbie Covington tried to tamp down this rumor. See for example, Covington to Congressman William Ford, September 26, 1991, Box, Imperial Fire, Hamlet City Hall, Hamlet, NC.
21.On the legend of the fire and Barrington, see author interview with Lorrie Boyle and the following newspaper accounts: Karl Stark, “Sudden Horror of Fatal Fire Overwhelms Tiny N.C. Town,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 1991; and Peter Kilborn, “In Aftermath of Deadly Fire, A Poor Town Struggles Back,” New York Times, November 25, 1991.
22.Williams, “Seven Years of Silence.”
23.For some background on Dawkins, see Jeff Holland, “Lance Route Salesman Philip Dawkins One of Fire Victims,” Richmond County Daily Journal, n.d., in author’s possession; and Jeff Holland, “None of Them Should Have Died,” Richmond County Daily Journal, August 30, 1992.
24.There are a number of conflicting accounts of how Philip Jr. learned of his father’s death. See, for instance, Holland, “Lance Route Salesman.” The account here relies on several firefighters on the scene that day. See author interviews with Gus Bellamy, Frankie Moree, and Calvin White; and a letter from Henry L. Kitchin to Gary Johnson, January 27, 1993, Box, Imperial Fire, Hamlet City Hall, Hamlet, NC.
25.On Webb and his tastes, see Karl Stark, “Sudden Horror of Fatal Fire.” See also Brad Isbell Photo, “Tragedy at Hamlet,” Folder—Imperial Food Products Plant Other Employees, Photo Archives, Raleigh News and Observer, Raleigh, NC.
26.On the Moateses’ story, see Jon Jefferson, “Dying for Work,” ABA Journal, January 1993; Estes Thompson, “Blaze in Chicken Plant Smolders for Survivors,” The State, September 14, 1992; Robin P. Teater, “Hamlet Fire Victims Can’t Remember,” Richmond County Daily Journal, October 27, 1991; and “Mildred Lassiter Moates: Summary of Injuries and Damages Resulting From September 3, 1991 Industrial Plant Fire,” from records of Woody Gunter, in author’s possession.
27.Author interview with Martin Quick. Kemlite Video, from Charles Bection Collection, Durham, North Carolina.
28.Author interviews with Berry Barbour.
29.On attempts to revive Gagnon, see “Imperial Food Processing Fire,” Hamlet Fire Department, September 3, 1991, Box, Imperial Fire, Hamlet City Hall, Hamlet, NC.
30.Author interview at the diner with Neil Cadieu, Tom MacCallum, and Bert Unger.
31.Claudia Rankin, Citizen: An American Lyric (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014), 114. Other accounts of the story of the Hamlet fire include a section of a chapter from David Harvey, “Class Relations, Social Justice, and the Political Geography of Difference,” in Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, edited by David Harvey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 334–41, 349–50; Lawrence Naumoff’s novel, A Southern Tragedy in Crimson and Yellow (Winston-Salem, NC: Zuckerman Cannon Publishers, 2005); essay from Judy Aulette and Raymond Michalowski, “Fire in Hamlet: A Case Study of State-Corporate Crime,” in White Collar Crime: Class and Contemporary Views, edited by Gilbert Geis, Robert F. Meier, and Lawrence M. Salinger (New York: Free Press, 1995), 166–90; Erik Loomis, “This Day in Labor History: September 3, 1991,” Lawyers, Guns, and Money Blog, September 3, 2016, available at, www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/09/this-day-in-labor-history-september-3-1991; and the song from Mojo Nixon and Jello Biafra, “Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster,” available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyU-PvbOjlo.
1: Hamlet
1.E. Gordon Mooneyhan, “Hamlet, North Carolina,” Trains (June 1992), 64; and Panel, “Hamlet’s Boom Began,” from Hamlet Depot Museum (visited on March 10, 2013). The two sources agree on the date of the town’s founding and on the fact that there were two railroad lines that ran through it. They don’t, however, agree on the names of these railroads. I drew on the Hamlet article in Trains here for the names.
2.On the development of the town, see author interview with Jane Mercer. For more on the history of Hamlet, see Richmond County Historical Society, Mixed Blessings: Richmond County History, 1900–2000 (Rockingham, NC: Richmond County Historical Society, 2010), 36; City of Hamlet website, www.hamletnc.us/cityhistory.html; and Dan Bennett, “Magazine Features Historic Hamlet Station,” Hamlet News, February 4, 1982.
3.Riley Watson interviewed by Abbie Covington, August 19, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
4.Mooneyhan, “Hamlet, North Carolina,” 64–65.
5.On the power of the breadwinner ideal, see Robert Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of Democracy Since the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012).
6.Clark Cox, Deadly Greed: The McEachern Murders in Hamlet, North Carolina (Boone, NC: High Country Publishers, Ltd, 2003), 32.
7.Burnell McGirt interviewed by Glenn Sumpter, July 21, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
8.Nate Campbell interviewed by Abbie Covington, n.d., Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
9.Author interview with Ron Niland.
10.United States Census, Richmond County Master Area Reference, 1980, available at digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15012coll4/id/2312/rec/1.
11.On the minstrel shows, see interview with Nate Campbell by Abbie Covington, August 14, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC. On race and ongoing tensions with the police, see Hamlet native Jody Meacham’s novel set in the town in the 1970s, Through the Heart of the South (San Jose, CA: Doodlebug Publishing, 2010).
12.Author interviews with Harold Miller and Mike Quick. For more on the city’s racial geography, see Cox, Deadly Greed, 33. For more on segregation in Hamlet, see interview with J.W. Mask, February 15, 1991, Southern Oral History Project, available at docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/M-0013/M-0013.html.
13.On African American laborers on the railroad in Hamlet, see interview with Walter Bell by David Adeimy, August 20, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
14.See McDonald’s obituary and more details about his life, available at www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=64493504.
15.Author interview with Joseph Arnold.
16.Author interview with Josh Newton.
17.Author interview with Mike Quick.
18.Interview with Walter Bell by David A. Adeimy, August 20, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC; Tom Lawton, “The Life and Times of a RR Town,” Fayetteville Observer, February 28, 1982.
19.Interview with Neil Cadieu by Abbie Covington, n.d., Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
20.Mixed Blessings, 30. On the bowling alley, interview with Wingate Williamson by Glenn Sumpter, July 22, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
21.On Hamlet hospital, see Mixed Blessings, 137; interview with Burnell McGirt by Glenn Sumpter, July 21, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project; and author interview with Ron Niland.
22.On the railroad mergers and other changes in the industry, see MDC, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC), “Three Faces of Rural North Carolina: A Summary Report to the North Carolina Commission on Jobs and Economic Growth,” (December 1986), 1, North Carolina Collection, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC. Interview with Burnell McGirt by Glenn Sumpter, July 21, 2009; interview with Ed Snyder by Glenn Sumpter, August 5, 2009; and interview with Nate Campbell by Abbie Covington, August 14, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
23.Mixed Blessings, 173–74.
24.MDC, Inc., “Three Faces,” 12. See also Peter A. Coclanis and Louis M. Kyriakoudes, “Selling Which South?: Economic Change in Rural and Small-Town North Carolina in an Era of Globalization, 1940–2007,” Southern Cultures 4 (Winter 2007): 96; and Jane Ruffin, “A World Apart: Economic growth of North Carolina’s rural areas,” Business North Carolina (April 1992): 92. See also George Packer, especially the sections set in North Carolina, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013).
25.Interview with Riley Watson by Abbie Covington, August 19, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC. Author interview with Josh Newton.
&n
bsp; 26.Account of the riot drawn from the following sources: “Arrest Raises Controversy,” Richmond County Daily Journal, June 6, 1975; “Hamlet Curfew Imposed After Racial Violence,” Greensboro Daily News, June 8, 1975; “Hamlet Unrest Continues,” Richmond County Daily Journal, June 9, 1975; and Mixed Blessings, 175–76.
27.Tim Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story (New York: Crown, 2004).
28.Author interview with Harold Miller. For details on the look and feel of the town, see Karl Stark, “Sudden Horror of Fatal Fire Overwhelms Tiny N.C. Town,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 1991.
29.Jane Ruffin, “Dreams of Better Days,” News and Observer, December 9, 1991; and B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Factory Fire Leaves Pall Over All-American City,” New York Times, September 5, 1991.
30.Ruffin, “Dreams of Better Days,” and Ayers, “Factory Leaves Pall.”
31.Peter Kilborn, “In Aftermath of Deadly Fire, A Poor Town Struggles Back,” New York Times, November 25, 1991; and Ruffin, “Dreams of Better Days.” Author interview with Ron Niland; and interviews with Riley Watson by Abbie Covington, August 19, 2009, and Bert Unger by Glenn Sumpter, August 7, 2009, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
32.Ruffin, “Dreams of Better Days.”
33.Ruffin, “Dreams of Better Days”; Mixed Blessings, 123–34; MDC Inc., “Three Faces,” Appendix C, 13; and Riley Watson interviewed by Abbie Covington, August 19, 2009, and Neil Cadieu interview by Covington, Hamlet Depot Museum Oral History Project, Hamlet, NC.
34.Author interview with Ada Blanchard.
35.Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Cambridge, MA.: Da Capo Press, 2001), 5.
36.“Voiceless Workers?” Charlotte Observer, October 29, 1991. See also Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, et al., Like a Family: The Making of the Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); and Bryant Simon, “Rethinking Why There Are So Few Unions in the South,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 81 (Summer 1997): 465–84.