Notes from the Producers

Thus, before beginning the film project, Vera gathered an unprecedented group of nearly sixty scholars, community activists and educators, mostly in the South, to guide us through the complex process of gathering this "lost" history. It was not long before we realized why.

When we first began to research the film five years ago, we found that many elderly strike veterans were unwilling and even ashamed to speak about their involvement in the 1934 strike. We soon recognized that how people remember is as important as what they remember. The film offered what we hoped was a safe forum to explore these feelings, and to reclaim -often for the first time- a history of citizenship and collective action.

The result, we believe, is an inclusive labor history that is not about "which side are you on" but about community and democracy. Veterans of the events of 1934 and their descendants -black, white, mill worker, manager, union, and non-union- tell a many-layered story about mill village life, work, and culture.

We hope The Uprising of '34 will help advance a necessary dialogue between the past and the present, between young people and old, between the words and vision of textile workers in the Great Depression and working people today. This program is about talking together. We are honored to extend this dialogue to your community.

                                              Judith Helfand
                                              George Stoney
                                              May 15, 1995