October 7th, 2009
The Real "Norma Rae" Dies
On Sept. 11 at age 68 Crystal Lee Sutton died of brain cancer. She had had two surgeries and suffered a two-month lapse in treatment while she haggled over health care coverage. She told the Burlington (NC) Times News, she was fighting a battle facing so many of the working poor. “How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death?” she said. “It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.” The fight with the insurer was her second major battle of her life.
According to the LA Times, Crystal was born into a family of textile workers. By age 17 she was in the mill. In 1973 at age 33 she was working for $2.65 an hour at the J. P. Stevens factory in Roanoke Rapids, NC sporting a union pin. A coal miner-turned-organizer, Eli Zivkovich, was attempting to unionize the workers.
She angered management and was fired for supporting the union. Immediately afterwards, she wrote “UNION” on piece of cardboard, climbed onto a table with the sign raised. The workers switched off their machines. Crystal was arrested. The next year the plant voted in the union. She won back wages (only $13,000) and moved on.
Her subsequent union advocacy cost her a second marriage. The story of her heroism was written in a 1975 book and inspired the movie “Norma Rae,” which led to Sally Field’s Oscar winning performance depicting Crystal. The producers fought Crystal over details of the movie; she forbade them from using her name.
Crystal Lee Sutton worked as a maid and security guard until her health deteriorated.
Her legacy : “It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world.”
Tags: Crytal Lee Sutton, Eli Zivkovich, Norma Rae
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Employer Action/Inaction, Social Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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