For generations of Chattooga County families, the textile mill at Trion was more than a place to work. 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. 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. Textile manufacturing had been part of Trion for almost a century by the time of the strike. The Trion Factory was established in 1845, with production beginning in 1847, making it the first cotton mill in Northwest Georgia. The factory survived the Civil War. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, owner Andrew Allgood convinced Union General William T. Sherman that the factory had manufactured cloth for the Confederacy under protest and that Allgood remained a Union man. Sherman issued protection papers for the mill, sparing it from destruction. Over the decades that followed, the mill expanded and Trion developed into one of Northwest Georgia’s…
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