by Jody Bell and Regan Honeycutt 
In the late 1960’s  a white nurse prevented five African American nurses from reading patient charts at the Medical University of South Carolina. Without giving any sort of reseasoning, the five nurses walked away recongizing that this was discrimination. Shortly after they were fired for insubordination. 

What followed after was a grassroots movement that gave a voice to the major grievances that African American nurses had. They experienced receiving constant racial slurs, a compensation of only $1.30 an hour, and policies forcing them to take breaks and eat lunch in bathrooms and boiler rooms. 

As the movement grew, leaders contacted a growing healthcare union known as 1199, which was mostly based in New York at the time. They dispatched union organizers in November of 1968, and in response the hospital’s president, William McCord, threatened employees involved with the movement. Following McCord’s utter dismissal of their demands over 60 Charleston County Hospital employees walked out of their jobs on March 19th 1969. The support they received was massive, and additional protestors-- from various occupations and backgrounds-- joined the movement. Just over a month later, Governor McNair ordered more than one thousand state troopers and National Guardsmen to Charleston after imposing a curfew and declaring a state of emergency. 

The streets turned to combat zones and the city was aflame as police brutality ran rampant and hundreds of arrests were made. The movement gartered national attention, and strikers received donations from various progressive organizations to support their efforts.

On June 27th, 1969, a settlement was finally made. The Medical College Hospital administration promised to rehire all strikers, abide by a new grievance process, and provide substantial pay increases. William Saunders, one of the leaders in the movement, hailed the settlement as a “victory for 25,000 [hospital] workers, Black and white, across the state.”

Sources

1969 outtakes. (WIS-TV News Story 7388.) WIS-TV News Collection. Moving Image Research 

Collections. University of South Carolina.

Charleston hospital strike, Local 1199B gathering--outtakes. (WIS-TV News Story 7336.) 

WIS-TV News Collection. Moving Image Research Collections. University of South 

Carolina.

Charleston hospital strike--outtakes. WIS-TV News Collection. Moving Image Research 

Collections. University of South Carolina.

Charleston hospital strike: striker sit-in at Capitol building in Columbia--outtakes. (WLTX-TV 

News Story 520.) WLTX-TV News Collection. Moving Image Research Collections. 

University of South Carolina

“Mary Moultrie” Lowcountry Digital Library, The Citadel Archives & Museum, 2011-10-23.

“Oral History Interview with J. Michael Graves, 1985” Lowcountry Digital Library, Avery 

Research Center at the College of Charleston, 3/7/1985.

Union 1199 demonstration at Crafts Farrow Hospital--outtakes. (WIS-TV News Story 72-436.)

WIS-TV News Collection. Moving Image Research Collections. University of South 

Carolina.