A little bit of cigar history : Charleston Cigar Factory

[El Presidente]

https://www.counton2.com/news/charleston-cigar-factory-declared-national-historic-landmark/

Charleston Cigar Factory declared National Historic Landmark

by: Jameson Moyer

Posted: Dec 16, 2024 / 11:21 PM EST

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The US Department of Interior declared Monday a Charleston building pivotal in southern labor activism during the late twentieth century to be a National Historical Landmark.

DOI Secretary Deb Haaland designated the Charleston Cigar Factory, alongside 18 other spots in the United States. The honor is the highest federal recognition for a property of historical significance.

Originally, the East Bay Street factory began as a cotton manufacturing facility in 1881 before the American Cigar Company took over leasing the space in 1903. American Cigar officially bought the property in 1912.

 

Cigar production lasted until 1973; during its peak, the factory produced 1.5 million cigars daily.

The factory had significant impacts on Charleston’s economy from the time it opened through the Great Depression and into the 70s.

Via National Park Service filing

The space earned designation mainly because of its importance in the post-World War II national strike wave which trickled down to impact labor and civil rights activism in the future.

 

According to the National Park Service, Charleston Cigar Factory workers, who were also Food, Tobacco and Allied Workers (FTA) union members, picketed and staged sit-down strikes in front of the factory from October 1945 to March 1946 over unfair pay, work conditions, and racial discrimination.

Via National Park Service filing

A historical marker erected to honor the strike states that initially, 1,2000 out of 1,4000 Charleston factory employees, the largest American Cigar factory, walked out to join the protests. The majority of those employed were African American women.

The strike was part of a more significant effort involving American Cigar Company plants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey.
 
“Additionally, the strike in Charleston served as a critical precursor to a large-scale campaign to organize southern workers led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations,” NPS said.

The CIO effort, known as “Operation Dixie,” sought to unionize southern workers, but failed due to its ties with the American Communist party amid the brewing Cold War and inside attacks.

 

At the end of each day, Charleston picketers would sing “I’ll Overcome Someday” by Philadelphia-based minister Charles Albert Tindley to boost morale during the trying time.

Strikers later modified the song to “We Will Overcome,” which became “an anthem that continues to inspire social justice activists around the world, further cementing the national significance of this site,” NPS wrote in the application.

Although the property has gone through renovations over the years, it still maintains original integrity which contributed to the NHL designation, according to executive summary documents.

“As America’s storyteller, it is our privilege at the Department at the Interior, through the National Park Service, to tell our nation’s history and honor the many historical chapters and heroic communities that brought us to where we all today,” said Secretary Haaland. “These newly designated historic landmarks join a list of the nation’s premier historic and cultural places, all of which were nominated through voluntary and locally led stewardship.”

[rabidraccoon]

I passed by that building every morning on the way to school. A little while ago it was bought, renovated and re-opened as one of those trendy multipurpose buildings that property developers around the country are in love with (apartments, $7 latte coffee shops, office spaces for boutiquey marketing firms, event spaces etc.) If I somehow become a billionaire one day I will buy it and turn it into something more like what the Newmans have done with the El Reloj factory.