Interview
I [interviewer James Cavanaugh] interviewed Tibbetts for about two-and-a-quarter hours on September 19, 1978, in his office in Madison. Tibbetts' presence in Madison was very opportune for the purposes of the TWUA Oral History Project. He is an intelligent and articulate man who viewed both the 1951 southern cotton strike and the 1950-1952 internal dispute at close hand from a lower-echelon staff viewpoint. He was about as deeply involved in the strike as anyone. His observation of the internal dispute was more or less from the point of view of a rank and file, local-level leader; and the interview clearly shows the anguish, confusion, and frustration of a local-level unionist caught up in very undesirable circumstances over which he had no control. The Tibbetts interview also provides the perspective of the southern textile unionist.
During the interview Tibbetts made frequent reference to a set of documents concerning the 1951 strike, the internal dispute, and the secession of the Pittsylvania County Joint Board to the United Textile Workers. These documents, including a position paper prepared by Tibbetts for the 1952 convention and a long letter he wrote right after the strike to “Friends and relatives,” are very valuable historical documents for TWUA history and should be at hand in order for the researcher to get the fullest understanding from this taped interview. (See Related Material below.)
Abstract
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user to wishes to listen to the topic on “How Tibbetts Got Involved in Union Work” should locate the place on the second track of side one, tape one, where the voice announces the 01:55 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “One minute, fifty-five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “How Tibbetts Got Involved in Union Work” continues until approximately 04:00 at which point discussion of the next topic (“Duties as Allentown Joint Board Education Director”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “How Tibbetts Got Involved in Union Work” give further details on what appears on the tape between 01:55 and 04:00.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index
There is a master index for most of the TWUA Oral History Project interviews in the collection-level finding aid.
