Sutton, inspiration of 'Norma Rae,' dead at 68

[Myra Bronstein]

Courtesy of Alamance Community College
Crystal Lee Sutton interviewed in 2007 on the day a collection of her artifacts were put on display at Alamance Community College.

Sutton, inspiration of 'Norma Rae' and Burlington resident, dead at 68

September 11, 2009 4:31 PM
Times-News

Crystal Lee Sutton, the Burlington resident and former textile mill worker who tirelessly campaigned for workers’ rights and inspired an Oscar-winning film, died Friday.

Formerly known as Crystal Lee Jordan, Sutton died at the Hospice Home of Burlington. She was 68.

In 1975, New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote “Crystal Lee, A Woman of Inheritance,” a book that chronicles Sutton’s life and efforts to unionize employees of the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids in the early 1970s. That story was later adapted into the 1979 film “Norma Rae.”

Sally Field portrayed Sutton and won her first Academy Award.
“Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave struggles have left a lasting impact on this country and without doubt, on me personally,” Field said in a statement Friday. “Portraying Crystal Lee in ‘Norma Rae,’ however loosely based, not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being.”

Sutton was only 17 when she began working at J.P. Stevens, where low pay and poor conditions were the norm.

In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three who earned $2.65 an hour folding towels at the plant in northeastern North Carolina.
Her turn toward advocacy came that same year when Eli Zivkovich, a former coal miner from West Virginia, arrived in Roanoke Rapids and began trying to organize the plant’s workers. Sutton became Zivkovich’s hardest-working volunteer, spending hours going door-to-door and coming into work early to try to convince co-workers to form a union.

“I’ve always been a take-charge person and if anything isn’t right, I’m going to put my two cents in. If I see someone getting hurt, I’m going to help them,” Sutton said in a June 2008 Times-News interview. “When I went in the plant with my union pin, you would have thought I had the plague and that is when the trouble started. It was truly different because a woman had never done or dared to do such stuff.”

A mill manager fired Sutton when she copied a mill flyer saying blacks would run the union.

She then wrote “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and stood up on a work station in the middle of one of the factory rooms.
The plant’s workers join*ed Sutton’s protest and shut down their machines for several minutes.

“That was why they wanted to make the movie. That was the first time a woman took a strong stand like that,” she said.
The workers eventually voted for the union, but J.P. Stevens officials didn’t sign a contract until about 10 years later.

In recent years, Sutton battled cancer with the same tenacity.
“I call my cancer a journey and it is interesting to see where it goes. It reminds you to live each day to the best you can. You are so much more appreciative of tiny things,” she said in 2008.

The Crystal Lee Sutton Awards, established by the Motion Picture Editors Guild, recognize individuals and organizations whose efforts have contributed to presenting positive images of working people to the American public.

In June 2007, Sutton donated photographs, interview transcripts, lectures and other papers to the Alamance Community College. The collection, housed in ACC’s library, is being inventoried for public display, said Sheila Street, the college’s director of the Learning Resources Center.
Sutton’s public persona — that of an impassioned voice for individual and workers’ rights — remained the same in private, Street said.

“It was an inspiration to know her. She was a fighter her whole life,” Street said Friday. “Her entire adult life was spent trying to help people through the union.

“Crystal was all about working people bettering themselves. She wanted ACC to have her papers because she believed we stood for working people and that they should have access to her work,” Street said. “It’s an extremely important collection because it gives you an idea of what one person can accomplish. It’s a very well-used resource among historians.”