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GREENSBORO — At the turn of the 20th century in the mill villages of Greensboro, most everyone knew James Evans as “Preacher.”

He pushed hard for mill worker rights, and by the mid-1920s, he urged his fellow workers — his “brothers and sisters,” as he called them — to unionize to help improve the working conditions at Cone’s White Oak plant.

It was a time of stepped-up production, accompanied by mechanization, machinery upgrades and efficiency studies, in which workers were told to do more and earn less. It had a name: the stretch-out.

Evans had a civil, yet righteous, indignation against the stretch-out. And every chance he got, inspired by what he learned from the Bible and the Declaration of Independence , he spoke out against what he saw.

He contacted labor organizers and helped stage a walk-out one morning in which the workers marched to the mill yard and sang hymns.

But by the summer of 1930 , Evans lost his job and his mill

village home. He couldn’t find a mill job anywhere and ended up a tenant farmer in Browns Summit growing tobacco, barely able to feed his family.

He believed he was blackballed for what he did and, in 1939 , he told a writer so. After that, Evans rarely spoke of it again, and his story disappeared — except in a book.

That’s where Susan Andrews found it.

It was 15 years ago when she read Evans’ first-person account in “Such As Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties.”

Andrews had never heard about it in Greensboro, her hometown, and what she read stuck with her, the words of a mill worker fighting for what he believed was right.

She wanted to do something with it. Now, 15 years later, she has.

She has recruited an award-winning playwright, a community college dean and a shadow-puppet maker from UNCG to help tell Evans’ story.

There will be a reading of the play today , and next fall, there will be a production that will include dancers, actors and puppeteers with at least 30 shadow puppets, 1- to 4-feet tall .

It’s a moving story that still feels relevant today.

“We all deal with disappointment, missed goals, missed expectations, and sometimes, people make hard choices and they don’t work out,” says Andrews, who teaches drama and dance at 10 elementary schools in Forsyth County .

“But they’re not any less brave,” she says. “So, James Evans’ story heartens people. He kept going, and he was proud of what he did.”

We all know — or should know — the influence of the Cone family in Greensboro.

In 1896, Caesar and Moses Cone started their cotton-mill empire and turned our sleepy town into a thriving textile city. By 1927, after opening four cotton mills, the Cones employed 5,000 people and created self-sustaining mill villages, complete with schools, libraries and churches, for an additional 10,000 men, women and children .

The Cones made more denim than anyone else in the world.

This is the world the Greensboro Historical Museum will unveil next fall in its gallery, “Denim Capital,” a look at local history that will feature many voices and many perspectives .

One of those will be James Evans, “Preacher,” the father of 10 children . His perspective is something his only surviving child never knew.

Dorothy Evans Stewart is now 94 . She never saw her dad as a union organizer. She only saw him as “Pop,” a gentle man who warmed her shoes at night by the stove.

She was 12 when her family left the mill village.

“We didn’t question things,” she says today. “You did what you were told.”

Her dad never talked about it, and she didn’t hear about it until she went to work — first at the mill in the weaving room and later at Moses Cone Hospital .

Still, Stewart heard only bits of the story. Her niece, though, heard it all. Charlotte Evans Hill got it from her Uncle Lloyd , one of Evans’ five sons . But after he told her what happened, he ended it with this cautionary note:

“We just don’t talk about it.”

Hill believes she knows why.

“Grandpa already had paid a big price, and I think he didn’t want to pay a bigger price,” says Hill, 75 , who also worked for Cone Mills as an office clerk. “He wasn’t a complainer, and if he did, I believe he knew no Evans would be hired.”

For decades, James Evans’ story became part of family lore, shared in living rooms, hidden from public view.

Then came Andrews. She secured a $1,150 grant from the N.C. Humanities Council to help bring in UNCG grad Tommy Trull to write the script, UNCG grad student Erika Grayson to make the shadow puppets and Roxanne Newton , a community college dean in Statesville, to help guide the production.

Meanwhile, Andrews had approached the Greensboro Historical Museum about helping her snag more grants for her play, and by coincidence, she found out the museum knew about Evans, too.

But Andrews wanted to find the real thing: Evans’ relatives. So, she unearthed his newspaper obituary from 1965 at the Central Library and started making phone calls in her “good Southern voice.”

That’s how she found Hill last year.

Hill will be at today’s reading at the First Friends Meeting. So will Trull, Grayson and Newton. And so will Andrews.

Ask about her motivation, and Andrews pulls out the book, “Such As Us.” She turns to page 187 and begins to read.

“Right here,” she says, pointing to the page, “He said, 'I’m still certain I took the right road back there in 1930. Peace inside is worth a whole lot to a man.’ Isn’t that great?”

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com