A new mural at 12th Street and Virginia Avenue in Bessemer City now bears the face of Ella May Wiggins, the mill worker and labor organizer who was shot to death by a mob in 1929 while pregnant and on her way to a union gathering. Descendants and community members gathered on September 21 for the unveiling, nearly a century after Wiggins became one of the most contested figures in North Carolina labor history. The project places her story in a public setting where local residents can encounter the history of textile work, organizing and racial cooperation.
Lorrie Herron, Wiggins' great-granddaughter, attended the unveiling with family members, according to the Charlotte Observer. Herron said the mural gave her a close connection to Wiggins and that the memorial committee plans additional events to keep her great-grandmother's story alive. Wiggins was a single mother of five who earned $9 a week working 12-hour days, six days a week, in Gaston County textile mills, the newspaper reported.
A Life Cut Short in the Loray Mill Strike
Wiggins worked at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City and organized workers across racial lines, the Observer reports. Her advocacy grew out of devastating personal loss: born in East Tennessee in 1900, she gave birth to nine children, four of whom died from poverty-related illnesses, including whooping cough. Her mill supervisor refused to move her to day shifts so she could care for them, according to the North Carolina Arts Council.
Her death came amid the broader 1929 Loray Mill strike, which began April 1 of that year when roughly 1,800 textile workers walked off the job to protest the “stretch-out” system, a practice that forced fewer workers to run more machinery for less pay, according to Net Present Visions. Strikers demanded a 40-hour workweek, a $20 minimum weekly wage, and union recognition. The unrest turned deadly on June 7, 1929, when a shootout at a strikers' tent colony killed Gastonia Police Chief Orville Aderholt, according to the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, which reports that seven union members were later found guilty in connection with his death; Fred Beal received a sentence of between 17 and 20 years.
Wiggins herself was killed on September 14, 1929. Five men, including Loray Mill employee Horace Wheelus, were indicted for her murder, but a jury in Charlotte acquitted them after less than 30 minutes of deliberation in February 1930, according to the Levine Museum of the New South. The museum notes that the trial was moved from Gastonia to Charlotte, while Loray Mill paid Wheelus's $5,000 bond. Her murder remained a painful open wound in the community, the museum notes, given that no one was ever convicted despite witness testimony and grand jury indictments.
Painting Through 110-Degree Heat
Muralist Osiris Rain spent two years bringing the project to completion after it stalled over funding and location issues, according to the Observer's reporting. The city of Bessemer City eventually helped finalize the site, and Rain worked for about a month to complete the painting. The project took longer than the one week to 10 days Rain said such work normally requires, and the wall was constructed with metal poles and aluminum composite panels and treated to resist sun fading for at least a decade.
Rain brings international training to the work: he studied classical figurative painting at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy, and apprenticed under master painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway before founding Osiris Rain Studios in Charlotte, according to Osiris Rain Studios. He also founded the North Carolina Academy of Art and co-founded Charlotte's Can Jam CLT mural festival, per the studio's account. The finished mural depicts Wiggins holding her infant daughter Charlotte, with loom shuttles woven into the composition, including one crossing her stomach — an image tying her motherhood directly to the mill work that shaped, and ultimately cost, her life.
From Labor History to Public Memorial
A North Carolina historical marker is connected with the Loray Mill renovation.
Gaston County Museum Executive Director Alexandrea Pizza, whose institution is involved in the mural project, said the artwork should be publicly displayed in a prominent Bessemer City location, according to the Observer. The North Carolina Museum of History also plans to include Wiggins' story in exhibitions when it reopens in 2028, according to the outlet, with Kimber Heinz, the museum's curator of political and economic history, among those involved. Wiggins was previously featured in the museum's Story of North Carolina exhibition.
Community memory of Wiggins has also passed through generations in less formal ways. Relatives and organizers describe the mural and planned memorial events as opportunities to continue discussing her cross-racial organizing and the working conditions that shaped her life, rather than treating the painting as a static memorial, the Observer reports.
A Voice That Outlived the Silence
Wiggins left behind more than a cause — she left songs. She composed at least 21 labor protest ballads, including her best-known work, “Mill Mother's Lament,” which Pete Seeger later performed or recorded, according to the North Carolina Arts Council. Her songs drew on her Appalachian background and mountain-ballad tradition. Her story later inspired North Carolina author Wiley Cash's 2017 novel The Last Ballad, according to South Carolina Public Radio.
The Loray Mill complex where the strike began still stands today, with nearly half a million square feet redeveloped in phases: about 190 homes in an initial phase and 143 apartments in a later phase, according to the National Trust Community Investment Corporation.
How the History Is Being Preserved
State and institutional records place Wiggins's story within the scale of the textile industry that surrounded it. According to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the Loray Mill was a five-story building covering more than a half-million square feet and was, at the time, the world’s largest factory under one roof. A Duke University Libraries guide also documents a separate 1934 textile strike in Honea Path, South Carolina, part of a broader General Textile Strike that drew more than 40,000 workers in that state; it was distinct from the 1929 Loray Mill strike in Gaston County. The former mill is now being interpreted as both a redevelopment site and a place of public history. The National Trust Community Investment Corporation reports that the property began phased historic rehabilitation in 2013 after decades of vacancy. The Gaston County Museum says its Kessell History Center at the Loray Mill explores the long history of one of Gaston County’s largest mills, while the new Bessemer City mural adds Wiggins's labor, family and organizing history to the region's visible commemorations.
