We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign
O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight
University Press of Mississippi
In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to protest racial discrimination, low wages, and the marginalization of their dignity. The movement began with an incident of wrongful termination in 1967 involving five Black women at Medical College Hospital that uncovered the pervasiveness of racial and economic discrimination at both hospitals. The termination sparked outrage among other hospital workers who, with support from local community leaders, organized a movement that galvanized the city, state, and nation.
We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Campaign explores this campaign in the context of a broader protest tradition, revealing it to be a full-scale movement that demonstrates the power and complexity of Black women’s activism in the mid-twentieth century.