Sep. 15--Crystal Lee Jordan Sutton, a former textile worker and inspiration for the character of Norma Rae in the 1979 film about the fight for unionization in Southern textile mills, has died.

Sutton, who lived in Burlington, had been battling a brain tumor for more than two years. She was 68.

She got involved in the labor movement in textiles just as North Carolina's stature as a manufacturing giant was about to decline. Unionization of a small part of the industry's work force was only one factor; overseas competition and the relocation of U.S.-owned mills to Mexico and Asia, where labor is cheaper, claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Within a decade of her arrest for agitating inside the mill where she worked, so little manufacturing was left that Sutton had to explain to people why workers were once teased as "lintheads."

She remained a symbol of the struggle to improve working conditions and wages for mill workers long after the industry itself had been completely transformed. As North Carolina hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs during the past three decades, Sutton continued to tell the story of how she helped organize workers at a J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids and what it cost her to be a part of the fight.

She also advocated for women's rights, racial equality, help for the poor and, after doctors found a malignant tumor on her brain, equal access to medical treatment.

Syd Alexander, a Chapel Hill attorney who represented Sutton for years and remained friends with her, said she was true to her values.

"She found a mission and a goal and she stayed with it," Alexander said. "She was not an articulate, polished speaker, but she was absolutely unabashed about telling her story and what she believed in. And she was such a natural, because the story was true."

The middle child of millworkers, Sutton was 17 when she first went to work in a mill in the late 1950s. She was folding towels for $2.65 an hour at the Rosemary Plant in Roanoke Rapids in 1973 when a union organizer named Eli Zifkovitch came to town, fresh from the coal fields of West Virginia.

Zifkovitch's passion for the workers' plight energized Sutton; she eventually began to encourage co-workers to learn what a union could do for them.

In May 1973, Sutton was fired. She grabbed a piece of cardboard, wrote the word "UNION" on it, climbed onto a cutting table in the noisy production room and held the sign aloft. As she turned slowly around, workers turned off their clattering machines, bringing work to a stop, if only for a few minutes, until police arrested her.

The scene is a memorable one in the move "Norma Rae," in which Sally Field plays a thinly disguised version of Sutton.

Sutton never wanted that movie made. She had already sold the rights to her story to a documentary film maker and refused to allow Hollywood to use her name.

When the movie became a success -- Sally Field won an Oscar for the part -- Alexander says Sutton realized she could use the film to further the cause. Eventually, she became a regular speaker for the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union.

J.P. Stevens, once one of the largest textile makers in the world, did not negotiate a contract with the union in Roanoke Rapids until 1980.

The Rosemary plant itself closed in 2003, laying off its last 320 workers. Since 1977, North Carolina has lost more than 250,000 textile manufacturing jobs.

Nancy Cassill, department head of Textile and Apparel Technology Management at N.C. State University's College of Textiles, said that although North Carolina is no longer a world leader in making fabrics, it is on the cutting edge in designing, developing and providing raw materials for a range of high-tech textiles.

And, Cassill said, "The industry is strongly committed to human rights and compliance and workplace issues."

Kept up the fight

After moving to Burlington, Sutton continued to be an advocate, speaking for workers at a local hotel and a phone company.

In 2007, after she became ill, Sutton donated her papers to Alamance Community College, where she got training to be a certified nursing assistant. She liked the school because it welcomes people of modest means.

Earlier this year, when it appeared the Alamance County School system might have to cut teachers because of budget problems, Sutton told her neighbor and friend, Carrie Price, they might have to launch a protest.

"She said, 'You can push me in my wheelchair, and we'll go to Raleigh.'" Price recalled. "That's the type of person she was. She wanted people to be treated fairly."

Sutton is survived by her husband of 30 years, Lewis Preston Sutton Jr.; two daughters, three sons, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8989

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