Charleston Hospital Strike, 1969

Black Women Demand Living Wage

When the black nurse’s practical nurses and nurse’s aides of Medical College and Charleston County hospitals struck for a living wage and human dignity, they Garnered the support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, New York City’s Local 1199, and the attention of the nation. Photo courtesy of Richland Library, Columbia, South Carolina.

1944

The American Tobacco Company opens a cigar factory in Charleston in 1903. In 1944, workers establish their first union contract. 

1945

In October 1945, American Tobacco Company’s refusal to raise pay and improve working conditions triggers a strike. The workers, mostly black women, ask for a 25-cents-an-hour raise and, after five months, win an 8-cents-an-hour increase. Participants will play a role in the hospital strike more than 20 years later.

Read about the cigar factory strike.  

July 2, 1964

President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The law requires equal access to public places and to employment.

Read the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

May 1965

The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare receives a complaint regarding segregation practices at Medical College Hospital (MCH) and names Charlestonians, including black businessman Reginald Barrett Sr., to a committee that will monitor compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

While the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws segregation in public facilities, MCH still practices segregation. MCH provides lounges for the white nurses and nurses’ aides but not the black employees. Two cafeterias exist, one for white doctors, one for other white employees, none for black employees. Segregated restrooms remain, as do segregated visiting hours and room assignments. 

December 1967

A charge nurse on the MCH neurology floor does not complete a required information session on patients’ conditions and treatments. She orders five black practical nurses and nurse’s aides to begin taking vital signs without the required information. The women object; a supervisor is summoned; they are told they will be docked hours. The standoff results in the women leaving. They are fired.

January- February 1968

The women get their jobs back, thanks to negotiations by Barrett, who is the chair of the local HEW committee, and Isaiah Bennett, an employee of the American Tobacco Company’s cigar factory and shop steward of Local 15A, Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union.

 January-March 1968

Black staff at the hospital “ought to UNIONIZE,” declares The Lowcountry Newsletter, run by William J. Saunders, a Johns Island native and activist, Korean War veteran, and foreman at the Wells Mattress Factory. Saunders continues to discuss conditions at MCH with Barrett as does nurse’s aide Mary Moultrie with Bennett. Moultrie and others recruit MCH black workers to a discussion group. They meet regularly at Barrett’s real estate office to discuss discrimination.

See a campaign pamphlet for Bennett. 

Read Saunders’ papers.

April 4, 1968

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has supported a sanitation workers’ strike. The SCLC support is part of the Poor People’s Campaign, which King designed to highlight economic inequality and to call for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

Read about the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. 

Spring 1968

“Every week we’d say, ‘You bring someone you can trust real good,’” says Moultrie. The meetings move to the tobacco workers’ union hall at 655 East Bay Street. Bennett advises, “This is a tobacco worker union; you need to get somebody that’s professional in terms of dealing with hospital workers.”

Read about Local 15A and see a 1945 strike flyer.

Moultrie and Lillie Mae Doster, a participant in the cigar factory strike, write to New York City’s Local 1199, the Drug and Hospital Employees Union. 

 Read the history of Local 1199.

September 1968

HEW finds the hospital in noncompliance with Executive Order 11246, which prohibits employment discrimination by federal contractors and requires they practice affirmative action to ensure equal opportunities. 

MCH violations include no training programs for black workers; black employees being paid less than white employees, despite the same training, experience, and length of service; a lack of black physicians; and white staff physicians practicing segregation. 

Read Executive Order 11246.

Local 15A, on behalf of the hospital employees, asks MCH President William M. McCord for a meeting. He ignores the request. 

October 1968

The hospital workers accept Bennett’s advice to each pay $3 a month in dues to demonstrate their intentions. Doris Turner, vice president of Local 1999, and David White, 1199’s Brooklyn area director, visit Charleston and are impressed. The workers organize Local 1199B with Moultrie as president; Jack Bradford and Rosetta Simmons, vice presidents; M.S. Alston, treasurer; Ernestine Grimes, secretary; Jack Coaxum, sergeant-at-arms.

See a portrait of Mary Moultrie.

October 11, 1968

McCord writes a letter, mailed to all employees’ homes, that warns against unions. In all caps he announces, “WE DO NOT WANT A UNION HERE AT MEDICAL COLLEGE.” He includes two cartoons: one depicts a stogie-chomping, champagne-swilling union boss embracing a tiara-wearing woman while a limousine awaits; the other depicts a union organizer holding fistfuls of money. 

The workers are outraged. The hospital carries a $1.5 million surplus, but Moultrie, for example, earns $1.33 an hour as a nurse’s aide. [Federal minimum wage is $1.60 an hour.] Previously, at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on New York’s Welfare Island, Moultrie had earned $4 an hour. 

December 6, 1968

Another request to meet with McCord fails, so the hospital workers decide to hold a high-noon walkout. About 200 demonstrate outside the hospital between noon and 1 p.m. They sing and carry signs. Hospital administrators collect names and photograph participants.

December 11, 1968

Two hospital administrators agree to meet with the HEW compliance team and Moultrie, Bradford, and M.S. Alston. The black workers tell the administrators they lack job descriptions, are called derogatory names, and are ordered to clean the white nurses’ lounges and stations. When they bring up the union, the administrators end the meeting.

February-March 1969

Picketers protest in front of MCH. Fifty workers meet with Charleston legislators in Columbia, the state capital. HEW returns to investigate unequal pay based on race. The workers inform McCord they will hold another high noon. 

Read  Bennett’s telegram to a Charleston representative regarding a public hearing.

March 17, 1969

An agreed-upon hospital meeting falls apart when dozens of uninvited workers arrive, McCord does not attend, and an administrator prohibits discussion of unions. Workers occupy McCord’s office until the Charleston police chief orders them to leave. Twelve participants are fired: Moultrie, Louise Brown, Andrew Daniels, Rosalie Fields, Priscilla Gladden, Mary Grimes, Helen Husser, Margaret Kelly, Annie Morris Lee, Vera Smalls, Virginia Stanley, and Hazel White.

See Bennett’s handwritten list of those fired.

March 20, 1969: Strike!

At 5 a.m., 100 workers walk off their jobs. By 5:30 a.m., 300 more have gathered at the hospital. Police arrive but make no arrests. Ninth Circuit Judge Clarence Singletary grants a temporary injunction prohibiting picketing. The strikers sing “We Shall Overcome.” Picketers remain until midnight. 

“Workers cannot live on $1.30 an hour,” says Elliott Godoff, director of 1199’s National Organizing Committee of Hospital Nursing Home Employees, during a news conference. He announces the support of Ralph Abernathy, now president of the SCLC after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King.

March 21-23, 1969 

Gov. Robert McNair meets with Herbert U. G. Fielding, president of Fielding Home for Funeral Services in Charleston. Fielding represents the NAACP, which keeps its distance from the strike. Hundreds gather for a second day of picketing. Police arrest fourteen when strikers prevent a housekeeper from entering the hospital. A rally on the third day draws 400. On the fourth day, police arrest 57.

See a portrait and short bio of Herbert U. G. Fielding.

March 25-30, 1969

The union appeals the injunction, more protesters are arrested, and MCH restricts admissions and limits itself to 325 patients. On March 28, workers hold a high noon at Charleston County Hospital. Moultrie announces 300 CCH service workers have joined 1199B. The union formally invites the participation of the SCLC, and Abernathy accepts an invitation to Charleston.

Read a Moultrie telegram regarding Abernathy’s visit.

March 31, 1969

McNair puts a National Guard unit on standby and sends 50 troopers to Charleston. “I’ve come to join you in sockin’ it to ‘em,” Abernathy tells 2,000 attending a rally. Moultrie, now 1199B’s leader, promises, “There’s a new day coming to Charleston. No more poverty, no more discrimination, no more injustices, and no more full-time work for part-time pay!”

The strikers’ demands include better working conditions, lighter workloads, better wages, a grievance process, the right to be a union member – and most important, says Moultrie, “the right to be treated as human beings.”

April 4, 1969

Abernathy returns for a mass march, which draws 500. On Easter Sunday, strikers visit eighty black churches to ask for help. MCH counts at least 450 strikers, CCH 103; both hospitals must limit patient care.

April 9, 1969

After unsuccessful conversations with the governor and legislators, Moultrie announces no more meetings with officials. The SCLC will direct civil disobedience, which will include rallies, marches, boycotts of downtown stores, and confrontations on the picket lines.

April 11, 1969

Police arrest Moultrie and 30 others on the MCH picket line. Bradford, the 1199B vice president, announces those arrested will remain in jail. On the eleventh day, Judge Singletary orders their release.

April 21-22, 1969

Abernathy returns to speak at a rally. The following day he leads a march with Moultrie and Cleveland Robinson, president of the Negro American Labor Council. More than 1,000, including schoolchildren, participate.

April 23-25, 1969

MCH trustees meet all day with the governor. McNair says union recognition is “moot.” 

Moultrie, Ralph and Juanita Abernathy lead a post-rally march of 3,000 to MCH, where 50 marchers break through picket lines to sit on the building’s doorsteps. Police Chief John F. Conroy calls in the National Guard, who arrive carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. Abernathy and Moultrie persuade those sitting to leave the grounds and accept arrest. Conroy arrests Abernathy. Also arrested are Local 1199 President Leon Davis, Bradford, and 50 more protesters.

McNair orders more than 1,000 Guardsmen and troopers to Charleston and imposes a curfew.

April 26-27, 1960

Trained by the SCLC’s Robert Ford and Rev. James Orange in nonviolent protest, youth gather to march. Armed soldiers, standing atop armed personnel carriers, confine them to a few blocks. With the encouragement of the SCLC’s Carl Farris, they walk to a street corner, sit, chant, and accept arrest. “We are going to jail and stay until the fuzz turns us loose,” said Farris.

More than 1,000 attend a Sunday rally. The weekend ends with more than 400 arrests. Those jailed join Abernathy, who is preaching cell to cell.

April 28-29, 1960

An arsonist burns up two private planes and a car at John’s Island’s airport. Firebombs hit five downtown businesses; five more stores are pelted with rocks.

On Monday, students skip school to march; 140 arrests include 99 youth and two Catholic priests, who are confined for five days with other protesters at the prison farm and tear-gassed the last day. 

Widow Coretta Scott King arrives, visits 200-plus jailed protesters, and speaks at an Emanuel AME Church rally attended by 4,000, as well as her father-in-law, Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., and brother-in-law, A.D. King. She focuses on black women and discrimination in her speech, noting, “$1.30 is not a wage; it is an insult.”

Read The Catholic Miscellany’s 1999 report on the priests’ arrest.

April 30, 1969

Coretta Scott King, Moultrie, and Simmons lead a march of 1,500 from Morris Brown AME Church to MCH. A third of the city’s black students skip school to participate.

See Coretta Scott King at Morris Brown AME Church.  

May 1-3, 1969

Firebombs and sporadic gunfire continue. More than 600 are arrested on curfew violations, a “racial curfew” strike leaders point out. With a $500 bond provided by a black businessman, a concerned Abernathy leaves jail on May 2. [Popular columnist Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. proposes, “If the hospital workers are provided a little more money and maybe future union recognition – so what? – everybody will be able to save face and we’ll be able to get the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the other paid protesters plus the National Guard out of Charleston.”] 

May 4, 1969

At a May 4 rally and march Abernathy says violence discredits the movement; he also says he will put out a national call if the state doesn’t negotiate with the strikers. “The city is in crisis, but McNair fiddles while Rome burns,” says Moultrie in her speech. Strikers are unnerved by increased Guard and police violence against women, including police beating a nurse’s aide in their patrol wagon.

May 11, 1969, Mother’s Day March

A strikers’ meeting with McNair fails, as does a meeting with MCH trustees. A national march, slated for the Capitol, is moved to Charleston. A four-hour rally of 4,000 includes five congressional representatives; various East Coast union representatives; Rosa Parks, best known for the Montgomery bus boycott; William L. Kircher, director of organization for the AFL-CIO; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; and Gloster B. Current, director of branches for the national NAACP. 

The march — participation estimates range from 10,000 to 15,000 — is led by Moultrie, Simmons, Abernathy, Reuther, and, after Abernathy leaves, SC native Jesse Jackson, of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket. Marchers include a Chicago-based band playing jazz, spirituals, and freedom songs and the Rangers, a security force riding white horses.

Read The Afro-American on the Mother’s Day March.

June 1-19, 1969

The strikers scale back their demands, dropping union recognition but still asking for better wages and working conditions, benefits, a grievance process, and an elected workers’ committee to negotiate conditions. HEW, after investigating the firing of the 12 workers and of racial discrimination at MCH, recommends the 12 be rehired and notifies MCH it is not in compliance with Executive Order 11246, meaning its $12 million in federal funds are at risk. 

Behind the scenes negotiations lead the governor to make an offer through Saunders — not Local 1199 or 1199B or SCLC representatives — and to meet with MCH faculty about rehiring the 12. 

White doctors and nurses threaten to resign. McCord notifies Saunders (but not McNair) that McNair’s offer is rescinded. U.S. Senators Ernest F. Hollings and J. Strom Thurmond and U.S. Rep. L. Mendel Rivers put pressure on various federal officials to back off MCH.

June 20-22, 1969

At a Morris Brown rally, the SCLC’s Hosea Williams says, “We have played around with Charleston long enough.” Outside, Abernathy and Williams refuse to disperse a crowd of 400. They sink to their knees to pray and are arrested. Angered protesters throw bricks and bottles. 

Abernathy and Williams are charged with inciting to riot, a felony, bail set at $50,000 each. Abernathy has been arrested 25 times but never charged with a felony or hit with a bail larger than a few hundred dollars. 

The two stay in jail on a hunger strike. At noon on King Street, some of 150 protesters lie down on King Street; police drag and beat those arrested. On Sunday, strikers arrive in their union caps at downtown whites-only churches and are admitted to one.

Read The Afro-American on Abernathy’s arrest.

June 23-25, 1969

Juanita Abernathy deplores her husband’s arrest as “the insanity of condemning the philosophy of nonviolence — the philosophy that holds out the only sensible hope for saving this nation from violence and destruction — with a phony charge and an exorbitant bond.”

U.S. Labor Secretary George P. Schultz comes to Charleston and meets with union leaders. Harry Dent, a South Carolinian and adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, presses McCord to accept federal mediators and end the strike. HEW tells McCord an affirmative action plan is due; federal funds will be withheld.

June 26, 1969

Facing textile and maritime union strikes in support, McNair demands a settlement. In tourism, $12 million has been lost; the hospital could lose its $12 million in federal funds; a port closing will cost hundreds of millions more. The union is not recognized; no strikers sign the settlement. The MCH agreement says that striking employees will get their jobs back. Minimum wage increases to $1.60 an hour; a credit union and grievance procedure will be established. Of more than 300 remaining strikers, 280 return to work.

June 28, 1969

After an announcement of the MCH settlement, Abernathy says he will remain in jail, awaiting the CCH resolution. Media report a total of 850 arrests.

Read The New York Times on Abernathy’s decision to remain in jail.

July 2-3, 1969

Of more than 300 remaining MCH strikers, 280 return to work. Abernathy, bail reduced, leaves jail for Atlanta.

July 18, 1969

CCH, balking at rehiring strikers, delays settlement for thirteen days. City council and strike committee members sign an agreement that 42 of the remaining 90 strikers will be rehired immediately, the rest within 90 days, 

However, of that group, only Simmons gets a job after three months of efforts. Minimum wage increases to $1.60 an hour; an existing credit union and grievance procedure remain. While HEW has cited back pay as an affirmative action step, that doesn’t happen. 

The SCLC temporarily finds in Charleston an unexpected second wind despite King’s death. Local 1999 expands in other cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. But without an enforcement mechanism and dues collection, Charleston’s 1199B eventually dies.