Crystal Lee Sutton is the woman on whom the Oscar®-winning
movie Norma Rae was based.
Sutton’s role in the history of labor is assured.
In the early 1970s, Crystal Lee was 33 and working at the
J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., where she was
making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions
she and her fellow employees suffered compelled her to join
forces with Eli Zivkovich, a union organizer, and attempt
to unionize the J.P. Stevens employees.
“Management and others treated me as if I had leprosy,”
said Crystal. She received threats and was finally fired
from her job. But before she left, she took one final stand,
filmed verbatim in the 1979 film Norma Rae. “I took
a piece of cardboard and wrote the word UNION on it in big
letters, got up on my work table, and slowly turned it around.
The workers started cutting their machines off and giving
me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very
quiet…” More
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