Gastonia 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike by John A. Salmond

Author:John A. Salmond [Salmond, John A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Science
ISBN: 9781469616933
Google: RIEeBQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 26522450
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 1995-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

John Carpenter, Gaston County solicitor (Line drawing by Fred Ellis, originally published in the Labor Defender)

The hearing of the prosecution’s evidence had barely started when there was a sensational development. Medical evidence on the extent of the injuries to Aderholt, Roach, Gilbert, and Ferguson was being heard when, on a signal from Carpenter, the courtroom doors were opened and a life-sized wax effigy of the slain police chief, dressed in a ten-gallon hat and the blood-stained clothes he had been wearing the night of June 7, was wheeled into the courtroom. The effigy’s entrance caused pandemonium—”a half-stifled wail” from Aderholt’s widow, consternation in the jury box, laughter from the reporters present, and angry objections from the defense. Carpenter said that he needed the figure in order to explain the nature of Aderholt’s wounds, but Barnhill would not listen. He ordered the effigy to be removed forthwith, both from the courtroom itself and from the adjacent office areas, though the clothes were admitted as evidence. Normal proceedings were then resumed, but already, reported the Charlotte Observer, “[the effigy’s] gruesomeness had had a telling effect on the jury.”19

This bizarre stunt had apparently been inspired by a popular Broadway play of the 1920s, The Trial of Mary Duigan, which had recently been filmed and had had a long run in both Charlotte and Gastonia. In the film, though, it was the defense that used a dummy, dressed up in the victim’s clothes, to prove that the diminutive Mary could not possibly have struck the fatal blow. The prosecution really had no reason to pull the stunt, which was “new to courtrooms of this or any other state,” except for its sensational effect. The effigy, incidentally, was no hastily constructed affair but had been carefully molded over the previous three weeks by a Gastonia lad, at a cost of one thousand dollars. He had worked secretly in the courtroom’s basement, which explained the reported sightings of Aderholt’s ghost.20

The state’s evidence followed a fairly predictable pattern, or so the Daily Worker thought. The witnesses provided “a maze of perjury and contradiction,” which was hardly surprising, given that the trial was merely a show, masking “the real issue of class against class.” The result was a foregone conclusion, the paper predicted, the legal lynching of the “leaders of the textile workers.” There was certainly a predictability to the prosecution’s witnesses. All of those who, like “star witness” Otto Mason, claimed to have seen the whole incident were present or former employees of the Loray Mill. And all of them told essentially the same story: that Beal had previously urged the strikers to “get to the mill” and force the night shift out, if necessary; that the strike guards had fired the first shots; and that they had done so at the urging of Beal and Buch, who could clearly be heard shouting “Shoot him” and “Do your duty, guards” as the struggle between Gilbert and Harrison began. They were all adamant that it was McGinnis who fired the first shot; Tom Gilbert even asserted that it was McGinnis’s first shot which hit him.

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