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FREEDOMWAYS       THIRD QUARTER 1969

On June 25, as the press in Spartanburg, Columbia, and elsewhere in South Carolina was carrying reports which confirmed that the federal government had no intention of immediately withholding funds from the hospitals in Charleston, Local 1199 in New York threw a large picket line in front of the main entrances of the J.P. Stevens Corporation. The pickets distributed leaflets to the public explaining the reason for their action. The next day, the trade paper for the textile industry* carried an article originating from its Greenville, South Carolina bureau. The opening paragraphs from this article stated the following: 

"Is the Charleston hospital strike a bombshell set to explode at the back door of the South Carolina textile industry?
"Some State textile leaders believe so. And union leaders have predicted that victory in the current struggle would lead ultimately to unionization of workers in government and industry throughout the state." 

The day after the above article appeared, the administration at the Medical College Hospital announced the settlement of the strike. The Charleston County Hospital strike was to take another three weeks, until mid-July. Many of the strike breakers hired at the County Hospital were people who had no desire to be put in that kind of a situation. Some among them were welfare mothers, who had been suddenly cut off the welfare rolls by The State during the strike and told to get a job at the County Hospital. 

a 113-day battle 
To the working poor, especially the low wage urban workers employed in service industries, the Charleston Hospital strike is a beacon light. Its significance is heightened precisely because it occurred within the larger context of SCLC-led "Hunger Marches" in Alabama, Mississippi and Illinois and demonstrations by the National Welfare Rights Organization in many parts of the country. The Hospital workers in Charleston, from the very beginning, viewed their activities as part of the movement to end poverty in America. One of the earliest leaflets distributed by the National Organizing Committee in Charleston carried the caption "LET US END POVERTY in CHARLESTON (OUR OWN)."
Just as Montgomery, more than a decade ago, forged a model for a mass movement assault upon the public practice of racial segregation, the Charleston hospital workers have given us one model for 

--
The Daily News Record, June 26, 1969.

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