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Honoring textile workers more important than mills
It’s obvious that we preservationists have lost the long and often contentious battle to keep Fairhaven Mills Building No. 4 standing for posterity.
Yet the effort to save the vintage mill that has ties to renowned photographer and child labor reform crusader Lewis W. Hine has not been in vain. It has done more to promote an awareness of the area’s rich textile heritage than any other episode in recent memory.
I often hear people who are eager to toss wrecking balls at century-old textile mills proclaim that they want to save only buildings that are “truly, truly historic.” Being a proud descendant of New Bedford French-Canadian textile mill workers, I may be oversensitive on the subject, but I take “truly, truly historic” to be a code phrase for “that which pertains solely to the whaling era and not the textile era.”
Let us remember that the history of New Bedford did not end with the whaling era, and historic buildings are not limited to what is traditionally called “the historic district.” On New Bedford tourism brochures, posters, postcards, Web sites, etc., our status as a former textile capital (first in fine cotton goods), should share the spotlight with our status as a former
whaling capital.
History buffs should lobby for a textile museum in New Bedford and for a memorial commemorating the mill workers in the famous six-month-long Great Textile Strike of 1928. We should also request that numerous explanatory historical plaques be erected throughout the city on and near buildings relating to New Bedford’s great textile era.
Recently, detractors have taken to calling those of us who seek to preserve vintage brick and granite mills “mill huggers.” While I wholeheartedly embrace with pride that maliciously intended appellation, preserving mills should be only a small part of our agenda.
It is even more important to preserve and honor the memory of the countless textile workers whose brawn, sweat, determination and sacrifice made our success as a textile capital city possible.
Gerard Bourassa
New Bedford
