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Norma Rae Wilson. That’s who I am. I grew up in the same small southern town in which I now live, and I have basically been around a lot of the same persons all my life. Just a few years ago I was still living with my parents house, a simple mother of two with a less than perfect past and seemingly no more opportunity for advancement and betterment of my life than the frequent irritation and annoyance my vocal nature evoked in my supervisors at the textile factory in which I worked. Together with my parents, I helped already wealthy and influential men with hearts of stone become more wealthy as they profited from the labor of workers like myself without providing us with proper safety equipment, benefits and in general, humane working conditions. My frustration had been long building, but peaked when I realized that my poor mother had gone partially deaf under those conditions. Still besides taking as much vocal liberty as I dared with the administration, I felt there was little I could do. On personal note, I was shamelessly subjecting myself to the passing fancies of married men who once a week brought me to a hotel, treated me to dinner then took what they concerned their sexual reward. Such actions disgusted me, but initially I felt there was no means of doing better, and with so many relationships already gone wrong: I was the widow of a drunk, the mother of an illegitimate son, and the mistress at one time or the other of various men, I felt this was all I could afford. Still I finally made up my mind to stop, to really think of the future of my children and the example I wanted to show to them as a mother. In a state of resignation one night after my weekly hotel rendezvous, I put an end to such nights. I was rewarded by being told and shown my perceived value to that married animal that was using my body. He verbally abused me, and then he slapped me, before going back home to his wife. Little did I realize it then, but that night marked many changes in my life, in my self perception and in my ability to change my destiny in my small town. As I literally ran out into a Jewish union man, he initially offered me ice to sooth my smarting face, but soon I realized he had even more to offer to me and my fellow factory workers. Coupled with my shock as I realized my mother’s deafness and my own tiredness of the monotonous disarray in my life, I started listening attentively to Reuben Warshovsky’s offer of unionization to our town. It was a previously tabooed topic, and he undoubtedly received a lot of ridicule and contempt for it, but his words were making sense.
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