Inspiration for movie ‘Norma Rae’ dies at 68
Labor organizer succumbed to long battle with brain cancer
updated 2 hours, 25 minutes ago
RALEIGH, North Carolina - Crystal Lee Sutton, whose fight to unionize Southern textile plants with low pay and poor conditions was dramatized in the film “Norma Rae,” has died. She was 68.
Sutton died Friday in a hospice after a long battle with brain cancer, her son, Jay Jordan, said Monday.
“She fought it as long as she could and she crossed on over to her new life,” he said.
Actress Sally Field portrayed a character based on Sutton in the movie and won a best-actress Academy Award.
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In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity.
In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.
Union organizers had targeted J.P. Stevens, then the country’s second-largest textile manufacturer, because the industry was deeply entwined in Southern culture and spread across the region’s small towns. However, North Carolina continues to have one of the lowest percentages of unionized workers in the country.
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