Interview
I [interviewer James Cavanaugh] interviewed Boggs at the home of University of Wisconsin School for Workers Director George Hagglund where Boggs was staying during a visit to Madison, Wisconsin. The interview was conducted on October 28, 1981, two and a half years after the original TWUA Oral History Project had been completed. Boggs was interviewed because he was a southerner who could talk about southern textile workers from that perspective, and because, as manager of the Pittsylvania County Joint Board, he was in a key position during the 1951 Southern Cotton Strike and during the union's internal political fight between George Baldanzi and Emil Rieve, 1950-1952. The interview concentrates on these three areas - the South, the 1951 strike, and the internal fight - and, as hoped, Boggs provides useful insights into all three. He is particularly helpful in bringing out the North-South tensions within the union.
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 who wishes to listen to the topic on “Appointment as Pittsylvania County Joint Board Director” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 07:00 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “Seven minutes”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Appointment as Pittsylvania County Joint Board Director” continues until approximately 08:20, at which point discussion of the next topic (“Biographical Background”) begins.
Notice that in most cases, sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentence underneath “Appointment as Pittsylvania County Joint Board Director” gives further details on what appears on the tape between 07:00 and 08:20.
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 re-searcher 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.
