Filled with historical detail and personal insight, this memoir re-creates the world of textile workers in Bladenboro, North Carolina, during two decades of depression and war.

Baseball, religion, work, death, and the company store -- these figured eminently in the lives of Southern cotton mill workers and their families during the early decades of the twentieth century. In this firsthand account of his native Bladenboro, George G. Suggs, Jr., captures in rich detail the world of a thriving cotton mill town where the company was dominant but the workers had forged a strong community. Here the focus is on the workers -- their interests, personalities, and values -- in their best and in their darker moments. Ultimately we see the many dimensions of working-class culture and taste a way of life that has vanished.

Drawing upon childhood memories and his father's recollections, Suggs covers events in Bladenboro during the 1930s and '40s. He describes the nature of cotton mill work, the stresses and strains produced by undesirable working conditions, and the various ways in which workers and their families learned to cope. Many characters emerge from this story -- from the kind woman who dispensed the company fiat money to the desperate men who would gamble it away. The book explores key topics such as social rankings, medical care, the company store, and workers' responses to death. Above all, we see how faith found expression on the job and in the surrounding evangelical churches. The workers of Bladenboro are gone, and little remains of the mills, but this work pays tribute to lives well lived under the most challenging circumstances.

Washing the Disciples' Feet is a book of reflections upon my growing-up experiences in the White Oak Original Free Will Baptist Church in Bladenboro, North Carolina. As a teenager whose immediate and extended family provided not only the congregation's majority membership but also the leadership from the founding of the church until my departure for military service, I was positioned to observe, participate and, especially, to be influenced by church doctrine and practices, by church leaders and influential members, and by the general harmony and occasional conflict that occurred among its members. Like dozens of other young people--principally my cousins--whose families dominated the congregation, White Oak Church was instrumental in shaping my character as it did theirs. Through vignettes concerning life in the church during my youth, this book is intended to pay tribute to past members of a religious institution that continues to thrive though in a different age.

Among the intriguing personalities that made life interesting for Will and Julie Summers in Shady Grove, a sleepy little town in Southeast Missouri where Will had been hired as an administrator during the Great Depression, were John Davis, the town's prowling eccentric; Mozella Lewis, a glamorous black teacher and her worthless white boyfriend, Harry Hussy; Marshall Ed Hooks and Father Hank Jolliak, alcoholics, one lovable, one not; dignified Rev. Harry Morton, the passionate black pastor of Zion Hill Baptist Church; ambitious William Jones, cocky prosecutor who officiously presided over two public hangings; Maggie Stanley, a buxom, overweight mother who brawled with her teacher niece, Emily Wickam, in Will's office; Lola Taylor, New York star of stage and screen, who brought culture and heartbreak to Shady Grove; the poker crowd at Elmer Guyton's hardware store; and the gossipy know-it-ails of scandal at Charley Bell's barbershop. These and others made life anything but dull for Will and Julia in Shady Grove, Missouri.