UTC Library Special Collections receives grant to document Chattanooga’s labor history

Photograph of two employees using machines in a factory to pour liquid into casts. This is likely at Wheland Foundry, located at South Broad and 28th Street. The back of the photo bears a stamp for Roy Tuley Studio in Chattanooga. Courtesy of the Chattanooga Public Library and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Library’s Special Collections department has secured a grant to digitize documents and photographs detailing the history of labor and industry in Chattanooga.

The $3,630 grant awarded by the Tennessee Historic Records Advisory Board with funds provided by the National Historic Publications and Records Commission provides for Special Collections to hire a student assistant during the spring 2023 semester to scan and write metadata for materials in the library’s possession.

Director of Special Collections Carolyn Runyon and Manuscripts Archivist Erin Ryan wrote the grant application.

“There is a widespread interest in labor history today among researchers,” said Ryan, the grant’s principal investigator. “In line with that trend, we receive inquiries in Special Collections for help with projects related to labor in Chattanooga. Right now, the bulk of our holdings in that area have not been digitized, which limits the reach of how many people can find and use them.

“The funding we have received for this project will allow us to create dedicated digital collections related to labor and industry in our area and to make these collections freely available on our website where global audiences can discover them.”

During the grant-funded project, Special Collections will digitize more than 200 photographs and approximately 134 pages of materials, booklets and correspondence documenting early Chattanooga manufacturing companies.

Ryan noted that Chattanooga became an industrial center in the South after the Civil War and was known as the “Dynamo of Dixie.” The city attracted industries that included iron fabricators and textile mills like Wheland Foundry, which began operating in Chattanooga around 1874; U.S. Pipe and Foundry, founded in 1887; and Dixie Mercerizing Company, organized in 1919.

“The collections are meant to contribute to primary source material about industrialization, including the roles of Black people and women in foundries and mills,” Ryan said, “as well as to inform research about the environmental impact of industrialization.”

Wheland Foundry closed in 2002, followed four years later by U.S. Pipe and Foundry’s Chattanooga property. Dixie Mercerizing Company has had numerous name changes and is now known as The Dixie Group.

Some of the images in the digital collections will include:

• Photographs of Black and white laborers working together in the foundry during the Jim Crow era
• Aerial photographs of the foundry complex, as well as photos of equipment
• Images of women working in different departments of the textile factory
• A booklet showcasing the Dixie Mercerizing Company’s operations and their mill village, Lupton City.

“Special Collections hopes that these materials will be able to augment and inform our existing holdings about urban planning and environmental issues,” Ryan said, “and that these materials will be of use not only to scholars but to journalists, students, artists, city planners and many others who may gain from exploring the labor history of Chattanooga.”

Click here for more information about Special Collections, including types of materials collected, hours and location, staff, past funded projects and digital preservation. Current digital collections can be viewed here.

Gallery courtesy of the Chattanooga Public Library and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections

Two-page spread depicting Lupton City, a village built for employees of Dixie Mills in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The spread touts the amenities of Lupton City, depicting homes, a swimming pool, and a community center, and indicating that “about 50% of the employees of Dixie’s Spinning Mill live in the village.” These pages are from a booklet produced around the 1950s, “Controlled Manufacture in Action,” which showcases the Dixie Mercerizing Company’s operations in Chattanooga as well as its spinning plant in Mebane, North Carolina.

Page 33 of “Wheland Facts for Wheland People,” produced around 1950-1951 by The Wheland Company of Chattanooga, Tennessee, featuring a spread about retired Wheland employees. UTC’s Special Collections repository holds photographs used in this booklet, as well as a typed and annotated draft of the booklet before it was printed. A large caption on the facing page (Page 32) reads in part: “It is men like these who have cooperated to make this Company what it is today.”

Photograph of three employees working on a factory floor. The photo is stamped with the date October 1, 1950. This is likely at Wheland Foundry, which was established in Athens, Tennessee, in 1866, and moved to Chattanooga in 1873, where the plant built sawmill machinery and oil well drilling equipment. During World War I and World War II, they made anchor windlasses for ships as well as guns and shells.

A letter on Dixie Mercerizing Company stationery provides a reference from an executive on behalf of Edna E. Knight, who is seeking work at American Railway Express Co. Both companies were in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The letter is dated September 27, 1928.

Photograph depicting an employee standing among a row of machines and skeins of yarn in a Dixie Mercerizing Company plant, Chattanooga, Tennessee. The photograph is labeled: “Spinning.”

Photograph depicting an employee working among spools of yarn in a Dixie Mercerizing Company plant, Chattanooga, Tennessee. The photo is labeled: “Twisting.”

Cover of a booklet produced around 1950-1951 by The Wheland Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for its employees. The publication includes a history of the company and a directory of executive personnel along with an overview of employee benefits and procedures.