Help Textile Workers Win Justice

Grayscale photograph of a man wearing coveralls and a hat on a black background with white text.

“Help Textile Workers Win Justice” was a rallying cry for the boycott of the J.P. Stevens Textile Corporation following the death of two of its textile workers. Grover Hardin and Louis Harrell, the latter of whom is pictured on this button, died of byssinosis, commonly known as brown lung, after repeated exposure to cotton dust at work. These deaths, along with other injustices, led to the organizing of J.P. Stevens textile workers into unions, who then began a long and protracted battle with the company throughout the 1960s and 70s. After merging with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union in 1976, the newly christened Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union initiated a boycott of J.P. Stevens products which drew widespread attention and momentum. J.P. Stevens eventually capitulated and met the union’s demands in 1980 in exchange for the end of the strike. 

Louis Harrell’s photograph was also used in OSHA-published brochures on the dangers of cotton dust in 1980 during the last year of U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s term. In 1981, newly-elected president Ronald Regan appointed Thorne Auchter as OSHA director. Aucheter determined that the Carter-era brochures had a pro-labor bias and had them destroyed, along with several films critical of the textile industry. The anti-labor policies of the Reagan administration stalled the future efforts of the ACTWU and other unions.