Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1969

BLACK WOMEN AND THE CHARLESTON HOSPITAL WORKERS’ STRIKE OF 1969 By Jewell Charmaine Debnam A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History—Doctor of Philosophy 2016 ABSTRACT BLACK WOMEN AND THE CHARLESTON HOSPITAL WORKERS’ STRIKE OF 1969 By Jewell Charmaine Debnam This dissertation uses archival documents, newspapers, and previously collected oral histories to construct a history of post-World War II black working-class activism in Charleston, South Carolina. I examine the women involved in one of the lesser-known events of the civil rights and black power movements, the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1969. These women, primarily working-class and black, were central to the success of the 113-day strike. As union leaders, strikers, soup-kitchen volunteers, and national fundraisers, black women ensured the viability of the strike. Without their participation in every facet of the strike, the push for better wages, working conditions, and a union would not have had a chance to succeed. While scholarship on the intersection of labor and civil rights focuses on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, specifically the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike, the Charleston Strike has lingered in the background. This study argues that black women were central to the success of the Charleston strike and that their leadership in the Charleston events was unique. The Charleston strike was a women’s movement not only because over ninety percent of the participants were women, but also because women led the strike on the local and national stages. Copyright by JEWELL CHARMAINE DEBNAM 2016 To Plummer Earl and Mildred Graves Debnam and Charlotte Justine Johnson Smallwood who instilled in me an unshakeable pride in black culture and the belief that I could be anything I set my mind to. Your influence is everlasting. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe many people credit for their dedication to the completion of this dissertation. My parents, Dwayne and Carla Debnam, have been immensely supportive of my studies and this would not have been completed without their encouragement. My dissertation committee chair, Pero Dagbovie, read countless drafts, challenged me to take intellectual risks, and provided institutional support during the critical stages of my research and writing. The remainder of my committee, Lisa Fine, Kirsten Fermaglich, and Michael Stamm, provided important feedback in various stages of the project. Librarians at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, the University of South Carolina, the College of Charleston, the Atlanta University Center, and the National Archives provided much needed guidance and assistance during the research phase of this project. I wrote this dissertation in various coffee shops, libraries, airplanes, and at home but the sounds of Beyoncé, Drake, and many gospel artists were a constant. v TABLE OF CONTENTS TIMELINE……………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………… .2 FRAMING THE CIVIL RIGHTS-BLACK POWER MOVEMENTS………………….11 BLACK WOMEN, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND BLACK POWER………………………….16 BLACK WORKING-CLASS RESISTANCE…………………………………………...21 Chapter One…………………………………………………………………………………… ..27 “You had to be willing to give up all of it”: Worker Unrest, Black Activism, and Genteel Segregation In Post-World War II Charleston…………………………………………………...27 LABOR ORGANIZING AFTER WORLD WAR II…………………………………….30 BLACK ACTIVISM IN AND AROUND CHARLESTON BEFORE THE STRIKE….32 POLITICIANS AND POWER STRUCTURES…………………………………………43 THE FOMENTATION OF A STRIKE………………………………………………….48 Chapter Two…………………………………………………………….......................................56 The Strike Takes Shape………………………………………………………..………56 INJUNCTION JUNCTION……………………………………………………………...78 Chapter Three………………………………………………………………. …………………...86 Crescendo and Conclusion: April to July 1969……………………………. …………………...86 MCNAIR SENDS THE NATIONAL GUARD TO CHARLESTON…………………..86 CONCERNED CLERGY? ……………………………………………………………...93 MOTHER’S DAY MARCH……………………………………………………………101 STRIKE ENDS AT THE MEDICAL COLLEGE……………………………………...105 SETTLEMENT AT CHARLESTON COUNTY………………………………………110 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………113 Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………………………116 A Women’s Movement……………………………………………………………....................116 MARY MOULTRIE……………………………………………………………………121 ROSETTA SIMMONS…………………………………………………………………130 NAOMI WHITE………………………………………………………………………..135 CARRIE MITCHELL…………………………………………………………………..143 Chapter Five…………………………………………………………….....................................150 “‘I will be involved where the action is’ ”: Coretta Scott King’s Life of Activism……………150 “I didn’t learn my commitment from Martin. We just converged at a certain time.”….151 “‘You know, there are a lot of people who’d like to regulate me to being a symbol.’”..155 “‘‘Mrs. Coretta King,’ . not . ‘widow of the slain civil-rights leader.’”…………..163 Chapter Six…………………………………………………………….......................................169 Governor Robert McNair and the Consequences of Early Civil Rights Gains…………………169 vi ROBERT MCNAIR’S APPROACH TO CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM……………….172 THURMOND, RIVERS, HOLLINGS AND HEW……………………………………202 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...211 After Charleston: New Horizons For Labor And Civil Rights?..................................................211 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………220 vii TIMELINE December 1967— Hospital Worker Meetings Begin February 8, 1968—Orangeburg Massacre, South Carolina State College, Orangeburg, SC March 17, 1969—Twelve Workers Dismissed from the Medical College of South Carolina March 19, 1969— Hospital Workers Elect to Strike March 20, 1969—Strike from the Medical College of South Carolina Begins March 31,1969—Abernathy Arrives, Leads Mass Meeting Late April 1969—Coretta Scott King’s First Visit to Charleston May 9, 1969—Mother’s Day March June 27, 1969—Strike Ends at Medical College July 18, 1969—Strike Ends at Charleston County Hospital 1 Introduction The Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1969 occurred at a moment of transition for the black freedom movement, the labor movement, and the wider American public that was still reeling from the cultural, social, and political tumult of the 1950s and 1960s. Less than a year after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, twelve workers were fired from the Medical College of South Carolina resulting in the initial call for the strike. The Charleston movement set into motion a renewed sense of hope in the civil rights and labor coalition during a waning moment for both movements. As civil rights transitioned into the Black Power movement and industrial labor unionism became less and less relevant, Charleston workers created their own version of black protest with aspects of nonviolent direct action, self-defense, and well-known labor movement tactics. This project contributes to a growing area of scholarship on black working-class women as well as the broader fields of African-American, labor and working-class, United States, Southern, and political histories. My study of the strike diverges from current scholarship on civil rights, Black Power, labor, and women and gender in several ways. First, placing the working-class and middle-class women of the strike in conversation with each other allows people like Mary Moultrie, the local president of 1199B, and Coretta Scott King, a well-known civil rights figure not necessarily remembered for her activism, to be considered as important activists in both the labor and civil rights movements of the late Sixties. Second, taking into consideration the recent expansion of civil rights literature to focus on the importance of working-class activists like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer as well as middle-class activists like Eslanda Robeson, a “political biography” of Coretta Scott King adds to the recent proliferation of work on women in the civil rights 2 movement.1 Third, contemporaneous accounts of the Charleston movement posited that Charleston was “one model for beginning to develop a nation-wide mass movement of the poor. And only a sustained militant mass movement will push this nation towards making a firm national commitment to abolish poverty.”2 While activists like Jack O’Dell, Andrew Young, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy considered Charleston a launching point for a new phase of the union between the black freedom and labor movements, recent histories of the fate of the national labor movement in the 1970s tell a different story.3 This dissertation discusses why Charleston fell short of meeting the expectations of labor and civil rights activists. Finally, this project complicates discussions of the post-King black freedom movement by reframing the discussion from declension narratives that often dismiss Black Power and other manifestations of black protest as contrary to black progress. Both the nonviolent-direct action tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as well as the more “aggressive” methods of Black Power protest influenced the Charleston movement. Ralph Abernathy, who assumed the leadership of the SCLC following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., championed nonviolent direction in the form of citywide marches that often led to mass arrests. In his recollection of Charleston’s atmosphere during the strike William Saunders commented “that we in Charleston was not going to have any riots; we’d have a war, because we were prepared to fight. And we were prepared to fight in a way that we

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