09/16/2026
On Monday, Bessemer City unveiled a new mural honoring one of Gaston County’s most courageous, and complicated, historical figures: Ella May Wiggins.
Ella May was a textile worker, mother, songwriter, and labor organizer who lived and worked in Bessemer City during the height of Gaston County’s textile industry. In 1929, she joined the effort to organize textile workers during the historic Gastonia textile strike, advocating for better wages and working conditions and, notably, bringing Black and white workers together at a time when racial division was often used to keep working people apart.
On September 14, 1929, Ella May was traveling from Bessemer City to a union rally when the truck carrying her and other workers was stopped by armed men. Gunfire erupted, and Ella May was killed. She was only 29 years old and left behind five children. Five men were eventually indicted in connection with her death, but none were convicted.
Nearly a century later, her story is being brought into the public landscape of the community where she lived and worked.
And that matters.
A mural does more than commemorate a person. It creates an opportunity to ask who we remember, whose stories have been preserved, and whose contributions have been left out of the picture. It invites us to see our history not simply through the people who owned the mills and built the businesses, but through the workers and families whose labor built Gaston County, too.
The new mural by artist Osiris Rain gives Ella May, and the working people whose stories are intertwined with hers, a place in the community's present as well as its past. We are grateful to the Ella May Wiggins Foundation, Bessemer City, and Osiris Rain for helping bring this important piece of Gaston County history into public view.
