Liberator In History: Crystal Lee Sutton
If we see people being treated unfairly, something inside of us says, This isn't right. Maybe we’ll keep our head down, or maybe we’ll step up and do something about it, even if it comes at great personal cost. Resisting an injustice is what distinguishes a common person’s mindset from a liberator’s.
Crystal Lee Sutton was one of those people. In 1973, Crystal had been working long hours in a North Carolina textile mill while raising three children, earning only $2.65 an hour. She knew she and her fellow workers deserved better, and when they began organizing for a union, she stood with them.
Management fired her for it. Rather than just walking away, Sutton grabbed a piece of cardboard, wrote the word “UNION” across it, climbed onto her worktable, and slowly turned so every worker in the mill could see it. The machines fell silent as her coworkers shut them off in support. The police carried her out of the building, but her courage awakened the others. A year later, those workers won union representation, and Sutton went on to become a union organizer herself.
Her story inspired the critically acclaimed 1979 film Norma Rae, which won 13 international film awards, including four Academy Awards. Sally Field's Oscar-winning performance introduced millions to Sutton's fight, but Field never forgot the real woman behind the movie. After Sutton died, she said, "Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave struggles have left a lasting impact on this country and, without doubt, on me personally. Portraying Crystal Lee... not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being."
Even near the end of her life, Sutton was still fighting for working people. After being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, she spent two months waiting for her insurance company to approve medication doctors believed could save her life. Frustrated by the delay, she asked, "How in the world can it take so long... when it could be a matter of life or death?" The medicine finally came, but too late. Crystal Lee Sutton died on Sept. 11, 2009, at age 68.
Not long before her death, Sutton was asked how she hoped people would remember her. Her answer captured the heart of the woman she was: "I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world." She never stopped standing with people who had no voice. From a mill floor with a handmade sign to her final fight against an insurance system she believed had failed her, Crystal Lee Sutton was a true liberator who spent her life speaking up for what’s right, not just for her, but for others struggling with injustice.