Viewing page 17 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

CHARLESTON'S LEGACY     O'DELL

Armed Services Committee, has been mainly responsible for handling legislation which has given the Military Establishment upwards of $80 billion a year out of the national budget. A recipient of the "Minute Man Award" of the Reserve Officers Association and the "Citation of Honor" awarded by the Air Force Association, as a good politician Mendel Rivers has also seen to it that Charleston has received a generous share of these billions set aside for military spending. As a consequence, the military-industrial complex or State capitalism has a considerable physical presence in Charleston. A Polaris missile base, a Naval weapons station, a Marine weapons station and recruit depot, an Air Force base, and an Army supply depot are among the military installations interlocked with defense contracts for new industrial plants to J.P. Stevens, General Electric, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed and United Aircraft-such is the military-industrial complex in Charleston. 

As for Strom Thurmond, his role in the 1968 presidential elections has made him one of the king-makers in the Nixon Administration, with political debts to collect on. Thurmond is, for all intents and purposes, "Mr. Republican" in the South. Together Thurmond and Rivers are a bi-partisan symbol of fascist-like conservative power and the affairs of the nation. 

Faced with the sudden breakdown in negotiations, a breakdown filled with disappointment and frustrations, the hospital workers and SCLC were forced to take a good look at how the opposition was using "negotiations" to wear the movement down. Caught up in its own contradictions, the hospital administration was pursuing a pattern which called into question whether they were negotiating in good faith or trying to disarm and undercut the strike movement by a series of deliberate, sophisticated tactics, At any rate, it became clear that onljy a tightening up of the strike as a community-supported mass movement would produce meaningful negotiations. Consequently in the week that followed, the hospital workers and SCLC intensified their leafleting activities among the rank and file workers in other industries in Charleston, such as tobacco, clothing, as well as maritime. The objective was to bring the strike issues to them and to solicit their support. Then at the end of the week, on June 20, Rev. Abernathy and Hosea Williams, the Director of SCLCs Voter Registration Department, led a prayer meeting downtown. They were charged with "inciting to riot"; held along with two others on $50,000 bail; a troop build-up was ordered for Charleston; and the 9:00 p.m. curfew was reinstated. 

207

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-13 23:23:26