The Women of the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike

By the late 1960s, domestic work was no longer a primary option for working-class Black women. For some Black women in Charleston and other places around the country, hospital work became an increasingly attractive career for women of all professional levels. However, the work environment was no less fraught with racial tension and discrimination. In late 1967, Black hospital workers, most of them women, at the Medical College of South Carolina began meeting to discuss grievances and to organize some unified action. Working-class Black women led these hospital workers to action. By 1969, tensions had reached a boiling point after twelve workers were fired for attempting to organize a union. This resulted in a 113-day strike. The women of the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike were marginal in their community. While some historians have addressed the strike’s importance within the labor movement, Black women as central figures, both as leaders and as foot soldiers, is less understood. Coretta Scott King’s visible involvement with the strike as well as local Black women leaders provides an opportunity to address Black women’s activism across class lines. Furthermore, this strike had aspects of nonviolent civil rights, labor, and Black self-defense tactics.