lisa scheer photography

The Mill Village Project: Everyday Life in Pictures

The mill villages of northeast Greensboro were created at the turn of the last century by the company that became Cone Mills Corporation, in order to serve the housing needs of its work force. Families rented small homes built around the different mills: Revolution, Proximity, White Oak, and Proximity Print Works. Company-sponsored grocery stores, schools, churches and YMCAs made the mill villages into a kind of self-contained town, incubating a distinct culture and identity among its inhabitants. Views of mill village life from the management perspective are well known, but the personal stories of the families that lived there are less widely understood.

This series of images documents the memories and experiences of five extended families that have lived for generations in the textile mill villages of Greensboro. The series features photo-album snapshots loaned by families, as well as contemporary photographs I've made. The family pictures record and celebrate everyday life in the mill villages from the beginning of the last century to the present day. The subjects include high school proms and Easter dinners, local cops and factory-sponsored baseball teams. The photographs affirm the strength of these often-overlooked neighborhoods, and serve as historical documents of vanishing communities.

Starting in the 1970s, textile manufacturing in North Carolina began a long decline. Today, the White Oak plant is the last of the Cone mills still operating in Greensboro. The traditions and memories of the mill village communities have begun to slip away. This is a glimpse of what was, and what remains.