Crystal Lee Sutton

Crystal Lee Sutton (née Pulley; December 31, 1940 – September 11, 2009) was an American union organizer and advocate who gained fame in 1979 when the film Norma Rae was released, based on events related to her being fired from her job at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, on May 30, 1973, for "insubordination" after she copied an anti-union letter posted on the company bulletin board.

Union activism and recognition Sutton was one of the union activists during the J.P. Stevens controversy—one of "the ugliest episodes in labor history in the United States which took place from about 1963 to 1980" and a "campaign to isolate the company by pressuring companies that dealt with Stevens or had Stevens officers on their boards." In 1973 Sutton saw a union poster hanging in one of the seven mills in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina owned by J.P. Stevens & Company mills where three generations of her family had worked—living in a neighborhood where the Company "owned every shotgun house" Shortly after, by August 28, 1974, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) began to represent workers at the plant. "Management and others treated me as if I had leprosy," she stated. Sutton earned $2.65 per hour folding towels . Sutton was physically removed from the plant by police, but she achieved her goal. Sutton became a paid organizer for the ACTWU and went on a national speaking tour as "the real Norma Rae." The honor was named after a 1963 encyclical letter, Pacem in terris (Peace on Earth), by Pope John XXIII, that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.

Sutton was critical of the ACTWU for not supporting her after her arrest, relaying that union leaders "...acted like they were ashamed to have ever had anything to do with Crystal Lee." She reported that, when she was reinstated at J.P. Stevens, she was snubbed by the union organizer. "I mean, I walked into that mill that day and the organizer said he didn't even know who I was. There was nobody from the regional office. No press, nothing." Two days later she took her accumulated sick days to demonstrate her value to the union. Ultimately her relationship with the Union was mended and she began working directly for the ACTWU.

Norma Rae The 1979 film Norma Rae, starring Sally Field, is based on Sutton's early union work. The movie is based on the 1975 book about her by New York Times reporter Henry "Hank" Leifermann Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

Personal life Sutton was born Crystal Lee Pulley in Roanoke Rapids on December 31, 1940. She married Lewis Sutton Jr. about 1977. Obituaries state they were married 32 years.