The Story In December 1966, four men began silk-screening printing inside the old log schoolhouse that had once been Springfield School. With organizational support from the Southern Rural Action Project and $10,200 in private donations, the operation grew quickly into Crawfordville Enterprises. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference helped launch the effort, alongside the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the Georgia Council on Human Relations, and the Taliaferro County Voters League. Within its first months, the plant was producing lettered T-shirts, sweatshirts, and sports jackets for schools and colleges, with early contracts from Morris Brown College, Operation Breadbasket, and SCLC itself. The enterprise expanded well beyond silk-screening. A garment operation, a woodcraft shop, two day care centers, and a farmer's cooperative all grew out of the same effort. At its peak, Crawfordville Enterprises employed roughly 80 people and became the largest employer in Taliaferro County. The products the plant made shifted over the years. Workers sewed blue denim jackets to be worn by marshals during the 1968 Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. In later years, the operation also produced fake fur coats and, according to interviews with former employees, fishnet stockings. The plant weathered a serious setback in 1968, losing its financial support and closing temporarily. A new grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity brought the machines back to life under plant manager Rudolph Terry, a Morehouse College graduate with textile experience. By the mid-1970s, the operation's story had reached a national audience: Ebony magazine featured the sewing room in a piece titled "Blacks Help Themselves," capturing local women — including Ollie Bell Meadows — at their machines.