Creator: Cone Mills Corporation.
Collection number: 5247
View finding aid.
Abstract: Cone Mills Corporation (and predecessor Proximity Manufacturing Company and its other subsidiary and affiliated companies) manufactured denim and other textiles chiefly in North Carolina and South Carolina. Moses Herman Cone (1857-1908), Ceasar Cone (1859-1917), and other Cone family members began investing in the textile industry in the late nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century were world leaders in textile manufacturing. The collection consists of the records of Cone Mills Corporation, Proximity Manufacturing Company (especially Proximity Cotton Mill, Proximity Print Works, and White Oak Mill), and other companies. Materials include correspondence, reports, minute books, a variety of financial recordkeeping volumes, contracts, blueprints, photographs, and audiovisual materials. The Cone Export & Commission Company series (Series 1) and Proximity Manufacturing Company series (Series 2) document textile mill operations at every level, from plant facility planning to manufacturing costs and sales to employment and mill village welfare. The records of Bernard M. Cone (1874-1956) and Herman Cone (1895-1955) in the Executives series (Series 5) likewise relate to management of financial and business affairs at Proximity plants and also document labor and unemployment in the textile industry, public perceptions of mill business operations, segregated education and recreation in mill villages, and civic and charitable involvement outside the mill, including the founding of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. The Revolution and other mills series (Series 3) contains the business and financial records of textile companies and plants owned and operated in full or in part by the Cone family, including Revolution Mills, Minneola Manufacturing Company, and others. The records of Ceasar Cone II (1908-1986) in the Executives series (Series 5) document the reorganization of all of the affiliated and subsidiary companies in 1945. The Cone Mills Corporation series (Series 4) relates to the financial and business affairs of the reorganized company. Other materials in the series concern public relations functions–especially advertising, employee relations, community relations and outreach, and program sponsorship of the Miss North Carolina pageant–and audio visual materials for equipment and safety training of textile workers. The remaining records in the Executives series (Series 5) document Cone Mills Corporation policies, finances, products, and involvement in external industry-related and non-profit organizations under the leadership of Lewis Morris and his assistant Dewey Trogdon. The Photographs series (Series 6) includes photographs,
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Folder 1083 in Subseries 4.4.3 (Miss North Carolina Pageant) contains information related to the 1970 Miss Black North Carolina Pageant.
Subseries 5.1(Bernard Cone) contains correspondence and other materials related to segregation in the mill
Subseries 5.2 (Herman Cone) also contains documentation related to segregated branches of the Cone Mill YMCA.
Folder 1836 in Subseries 5.5 (Dewey Trogdon) is entitled “Negro and White Attitudes Toward Problems and Progress in Race Relations” (1968)
In the Oversize Image Folders (OP-PF-5247/52-56), there is an image of African American field workers.