About: Carmela Teoli

Carmela Teoli (1897–c. 1970) was an Italian-American mill worker whose testimony before the U.S. Congress in 1912 called national attention to unsafe working conditions in the mills and helped bring a successful end to the "Bread and Roses" strike. Teoli had been scalped by a cotton-twisting machine at the age of 13, requiring several months of hospitalization. Decades later, a reporter named Paul Cowan revived Teoli's long-forgotten story, generating renewed interest in the history of the strike and prompting discussions on the nature of historical memory.