In 1905 Lawrence Peter Hollis went to Springfield, Massachusetts, before beginning his job as the secretary of the YMCA at Monaghan Mill in Greenville, South Carolina. While there, he met James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, and learned of the fledgling game. Armed with Dr. Naismith's rules of the game and a basketball he bought in New York, Hollis returned to the mill and changed the face of athletics in South Carolina. Lawrence Peter Hollis was one of the first to introduce basketball south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the game quickly gained popularity in the textile mill villages throughout South Carolina. In 1921 Hollis and others organized a tournament to determine the best mill team, and thus the southern Textile Basketball Tournament was born. Over the years, some of the south's top cage talent played in the tourney, including "Smokey" Barbare, Lucille Foster Thomas, Bert Hill, Earl Wooten, Billy Cunningham, Pete Maravich, Sue Vickers and Tree Rollins. Decade-by-decade, the history of one of the longest running basketball tournaments is provided, along with profiles of many prominent participants. Full rosters for all teams in all tournaments are given in the appendices, along with all-tournament selections and members of the Southern Textile Athletic Hall of Fame.

Presents recorded observations of mill villages confined mostly to the central Piedmont region, extending from Danville, Virginia to Gainesville, Georgia with more intensive observation made of the cotton-mille people in and near Spartanburg, South Carolina. Specifically addresses population elements, social institutions and organizations, aspects of social legislation, and occupational conditions of the cotton-mill people.

After the Civil War, the Yankee textile industry began a steady transfer south, bringing with it the tradition of a mill village, usually owned by the mill's owner, where the workers and their families lived. The new game of baseball quickly became a foundation of mill village life. A rich tradition of textile league baseball in South Carolina is here reconstructed from newspaper accounts and interviews with former players and fans. Players such as Shoeless Joe Jackson and Champ Summers made their marks as lintheads in these semipro leagues. The fierce rivalries between competing mills and the impact of the teams on mill life are recounted. Appendices list club records and rosters for many of the teams from 1880 through 1955.