Like many small southern towns, Marion was home to several textile mill villages beginning in the second decade of the 1900s. Labor unrest led to strikes and eventually to a bloody confrontation in East Marion in 1929. That violent episode has overshadowed much of the rest of McDowell County textile mill history, but the mill village also made for a strong community and life there was often pleasant, even idyllic.
Here, lifelong Clinchfield resident Mrs. Glenys Buckner Gilbert shares her fond memories of growing up in the village and relates how her father narrowly escaped the scene of the violent showdown at the gates of nearby Marion Manufacturing in October of 1929. (The 1929 strike is explored in detail in this post.)
Listen to Glenys Gilbert here:
