A Descendant's Story

One March morning while I was studying in my campus library, a woman called my phone. She wanted to give a complete, public interview on the story of the Chiquola Mill massacre. Madison and I finally had our interview.

Katherine Gary has lived in Honea Path for 78 years now. She says that the reason the mill workers had the strike was “because they made such small amounts of money.” Salaries were extremely low, and families lived on poverty level incomes in ‘mill houses’ that encircled the mill and formed an island most people were unable to leave.

Gary’s grandmother, Lois McClain, worked at the mill during the strike and saw firsthand the violence of the mill owners towards the protesting workers. On September 6, 1934, roughly 300 workers surrounded the Chiquola Mill. McClain was there too.

Dan Beecham, the mill superintendent, prepared for the strike by collecting several law enforcement officers and deputized civilians.

Lois McClain after the Massacre

“He called all the bosses into the mill that day when he heard there was going to be a strike. He put them in certain places looking out the windows with their guns. Anybody that was going on a strike, was not coming to the mill to work, was shot at."

Beth Cannon added some information to Gary's story, sharing some of the preparations undertaken by the mill owners in preparation for the strike. She notes that, "rumor has it that there was a Gatling Gun up on the roof of the mill, but thankfully, it jammed."

"The reason [my grandmother] got shot was one of her coworkers that she knew well was shot and laying on the ground. And so, she ran to help him. While she was helping him, she got shot. It was awful. Seven were killed.

"[My grandmother] got shot in the arm, and the picture of her has a bandage on her leg so we thought she got shot there but we never knew. She knew who shot her. She wouldn’t talk about it.”

I was shocked. I couldn't imagine being shot, and knowing the man behind the gun. The story of Bloody Thursday at the Chiquola Mill seemed much more personal than I had realized before.

I asked Gary why she thought Beecham would order such a violent response to the strike, and she said simply that he was “just that type of person.”

“Other mills around, mills in Anderson county, did the same type of [strike], but they didn’t get shot.”

By the end of Bloody Thursday, seven people had been killed. But, even with the pain felt by the community over the shootings, fear kept the violence hidden. Mill workers knew that “if they talked about it, they would lose their jobs.”

"Mom and Daddy both worked in Chiquola Mill," Gary remembers, "and I was living in a mill house. If you talked about it, you would be put out of your house and have nowhere to go. There wasn't many jobs around here. The mill workers just didn't have anywhere to go."

In a mill town of citizens born to mill work, the prospect of suddenly having no income, and no homes could spell absolute poverty for generations of a family. So, no one talked. However, mill workers showed their pain over the killings in different ways.

Even though the affluent and powerful mill owners did not allow local churches to provide decent funerals for the victims, the funerals still took place. Mill workers turned out in droves to attend the funerals. Gary recalls that "thousands of people came... thousands from mills everywhere."

Gary's grandmother returned to work at Chiquola Mill, still carrying the bullets from her ordeal. As a mother of five children, she simply could not risk looking for work elsewhere. McClain worked at the mill through her mid 70s and never once spoke about the violent events which earned her such a monumental place in mill history.