
For generations of Chattooga County families, the textile mill at Trion was more than a place to work.
It was at the center of a community.
Families depended on the mill for their livelihoods. Generations worked there, and the history of Trion itself became inseparable from the history of textile manufacturing.
But during the depths of the Great Depression, tensions between textile workers and mill management were growing throughout the South.
In September 1934, those tensions reached Trion.
And on September 5, they turned deadly.
Two men — Deputy Sheriff W. M. “Milton” Hix and strike sympathizer J. B. Blalock — were fatally shot during a confrontation outside the Trion Cotton Mill.
The events in Trion were part of a much larger labor uprising that became known as the General Textile Strike of 1934, one of the largest labor disputes in American history and the largest labor protest the South had seen.















