Industry on Parade: Sylacauga Saga

★★★★ · The Good Ole NAM! · donwert · 2010-10-31

Sylacauga, Alabama, as seen though the rose-colored glasses of the National Association of Manufacturers, is a wonderful little town of happy, thriving people who owe all they have to Avondale Mills---a cotton cloth manufacturing company. Look at the town pool the company built! And the hospital! And the library! And all the homes the company subsidizes their workers to buy! Alas, the only black folks we see (this is the deep south where the county probably had a majority-black population) are in a 3-second scene of black men doing manual labor at the factory. All of the skilled jobs are…