After the labor turmoil of the 1930s and the Great Depression, World War II brought relative calm and higher productivity to mill communities, but after the war mill owners revived the Depression-era movement to sell mill villages, and by 1958 they had sold 73% of the textile mill villages in the South. Owners sold the houses for several reasons: affordable automobiles let workers live farther from the mills, new labor laws limited hours and mills adopted shift work, providing more housing for larger workforces was costly, laws against child labor made family housing less economical, and regional leaders encouraged integration into the larger community because they believed the villages fostered delinquency and a distinct white lower class. Although selling the villages gradually eroded these unique communities, some workers benefited by buying the houses they had rented and joining the nationwide rise in home ownership. After the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and as more higher-paying jobs opened to whites outside the mills, owners hired greater numbers of African Americans, though mills still denied them equal pay and advancement until Black workers increasingly organized and voiced grievances in the 1960s and 1970s. The breakup of mill communities came slowly rather than overnight, as villages remained mostly white and many homeowners still worked in the mills or in other blue-collar jobs, but the end of mill-owned institutions steadily weakened community life as stores closed, school systems absorbed mill town schools, and mills stopped sponsoring teams and clubs. As textile mills closed and production moved to Mexico, India, and China in search of cheaper labor, they left behind cities and towns from Burlington to Gastonia and the enduring social, cultural, and physical legacy of the people who lived and worked in mill towns.