The Marion Massacre

Book excerpt: Buried in the collective memory of Marion, North Carolina lives a shadowy story of struggle, of power and of blood in the streets. Mike Lawing exhumes this tale of desperate factory workers - the outcast lintheads - and the small town sheriff whose questionable actions forever silenced the call for organized labor in this mountain mill town. Putting Marion's 1929 strike at Clinchfield Mills and Marion Manufacturing in historical perspective alongside more well known movements like Gastonia and the uprising of '34, Lawing examines the mystery of his hometown's oft-forgotten massacre and tracks the rise of its figures through the state's political ranks. It is a story of good and evil and the line in the mud that blurs them both. It is a story that deserves to be remembered. (Contributed by Ragan Robinson)