1 10 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/e6996b60ec5ff3d42debdab699582a1c.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=Y5RsNOdSmH3j1SK7-rdcqZM2JlWG0%7EMxGux8zuvW-3zdQYYFti1cwi0RJ2rJDtgbQNkfjWnFTjsltnZKT8-ALG0g11PPUnW2jpc9qWMH1KaGvewyB06SvzkGCxcMMhr5zJLtwfSVdafUwOlenbXDYbe5M31MnUuqpG06R9w6ua5ArRLqTgoYS1iFJgvX6CbLvk0w-tkVdYPLoOFfJiFzgrM-Ue0HLVbjoi5CbSGRNsk4DYaHUVGWBhgHncoG7iGm0gwmU7jLlvXqq1QSYQyNbAeQrwJal28dKu-49UZddXsVfNUzcwR6kG5simrD3cjy7OH2kV2EmFuvoWhrEk6TYw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a8f0c4c73540a2c69a52ec24f40249a8 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT: MARY MOULTRIE, WILLIAM SAUNDERS, ROSETTA SIMMONS Interviewee: MARY MOULTRIE, WILLIAM SAUNDERS, ROSETTA SIMMONS Interviewer: Kerry Taylor Interview Date: March 5, 2009 Location: Local 1199-Charleston, 1111 King St., Charleston, SC Length: 88 minutes, 41 seconds Kerry Taylor: You all met Mrs. Mary Moultrie, who was among the key leaders of the strike, who was coming out of MUSC, right? Mary Moultrie: Yes, uh-huh. KT: And I think Rosetta Simmons said she's going to wander back here. MM: Yes. KT: And she was more active from County. MM: County, mm-hm. KT: She worked at County, and then Mr. Saunders, who played a key role in convening the first group, even before the union, or before SCLC came into Charleston, you know, this group of concerned workers was meeting with Mr. Saunders about how to try to address some of the concerns that the workers were facing at the hospitals. And Mr. Saunders and Mrs. Moultrie both had, even before 1969, had long histories of working, you know, for human rights, and in the Charleston movements going back to the late '40s, right, even? But definitely the '50s and '60s, and Mrs. Moultrie, you became active in the '60s? MM: In the '60s, yes. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 2 KT: The other thing I was going to say about Mr. Saunders is then he played a continuing, key role in the strike in terms of organizing community support on the ground. And as you know from the film that we saw and from the readings, the strike became kind of a coalition effort, where you had the leadership and organizers from the union coming out of New York and the northeast, and then you had the people coming over from Atlanta and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who provided key community support in working especially among the church communities in town. But then you had the workers on the ground, who were out on the picket lines and also trying to really maintain and sustain the strike, and then there were Mr. Saunders's forces, you know, working the streets, and generating broader support in the community. So what I thought we'd do, if maybe each of you could talk a little bit about your involvement in politics and in the struggle for racial equality and economic justice before 1969, just as a way of introducing you. MM: Yeah, well, I had very little to do with politics or anything up until the hospital strike. However, when I was in high school, I worked with Mr. Esau Jenkins, I guess you heard about him. I worked at his restaurant, and I did a lot of traveling around the states with him, making speeches and stuff like that. It was basically voter registration. But I graduated from high school in 1960. I left Charleston for a few years, lived in New York. I returned in '67, and got the job at the medical university hospital, and that's when I became kind of active. I had worked at a hospital in New York, and when I got back here I found that things were completely different, because that was my first time working out, really, in the public sector. Because I worked at Mr. Esau Jenkins's restaurant, where we all were, you know, equal. I worked in New York and it �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 3 was a big difference, although I worked with all nationality of people, when I came back to Charleston, it was a big difference. Then a few months after being at the Medical University hospital, is when the nurses got fired. And that's when I became, you know, active. I went to Mr. Saunders, and told him what had happened at the hospital. These five people had been fired. And the rest was history. KT: How did you know Mr. Saunders? MM: (laughs) How did I know Mr. Saunders? Mr. Saunders has been active in the community for many, many years. (overlap) William Saunders: Everybody was around Esau Jenkins. He was a catalyst for basically everything that was going on. I think one of the questions that, you know, people keep asking are how, you know, somebody just volunteered to get involved. I haven't found anybody yet that wanted to do what we ended up doing. It's not something that you go looking to do; it just gets thrust upon you. Mrs. Moultrie just talked about the five nurses that was fired, and she didn’t mentioned that they was fired wrong. I mean, they wanted them to do something illegal, or the head nurse wanted them to do something illegal and they wouldn't do it. And they got fired. But people got fired for that many times before, but they were the first five that had enough guts to say, well, you know, we'll just walk out, if you're going to fire us. And then got to Mrs. Moultrie, so Mrs. Moultrie got to me, and I got to a guy name of, oh God--. MM: Reginald. WS: Reginald Barrett, who was on the civil rights committee from Washington, to look at the Medical University--Medical College then, it was not a university, it was a Medical College. And they were looking at all kinds of things over there. The Medical �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 4 College had the tenth floor, is where mentally ill people stayed. But when the civil rights group went up there, they were all white people, and they wanted to know, "There ain't no crazy black folk in this city?" (laughs) It caused some serious questions about that, and that made them change that policy also. KT: So the mentally ill were also segregated? WS: Yeah. The black mentally ill were sent to Columbia, on Bull St., but the white mentally ill person had a nice beautiful tenth floor of the Medical College. So those were the kinds of things that, you know, that we got involved with initially. I don't think that Mrs. Moultrie had no interest in them, but to be thrust to, you know, even when y'all came, y'all called her a hero, and she said, "No, I'm no hero." You better take it when they give it to you. MM: (laughs) WS: You caught a lot of hell for calling, be called other names. MM: Oh, yes. WS: And when she came, even when the hospital strike started, they started saying, well, somebody sent her to New York, and then she came back from New York with this agenda to do this thing. And none of this was the truth. And at that time, I was called a communist. I went to Korea, fought a war, got wounded, and things were just so bad, because I found myself fighting for freedom for Koreans, and coming out of Korea, find I'm not free myself. You know, like a fool, damn, how could anybody be that stupid? And so that started me looking at voter registration and all that kind of stuff. And Esau Jenkins ran for the school board on district nine in Charleston, there on Johns Island in 1956. They didn't hold another election from 1956 to 1970. They just stopped having �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 5 elections. And Doctor, to this day, I don't know how you legally stop having regular elections. But they just did. Anything that they wanted to do, they did it. KT: So that standing board just stayed? WS: The standing board just stayed, or if one of them got off, they appointed, the Charleston County delegation appointed another person to that board. It was a seven member board, and they just continued to do that, coming up to that hospital. What we did over there, I organized a group of people on Johns Island called the Concerned Citizens, even at that point, Johns and Wadmalaw Island. We gave them three names of people that we wanted on that board. If they didn't appoint those three people by a certain date, then we had a planned election, we were going to hold an election for school board. And we were going to elect a black school board and we'd have a white school board, just have two school boards. And the percentage of blacks in the school system over there was about seventy-five, eighty percent. So what they did, instead of having that showdown, they appointed Esau Jenkins, who ran for the school board in '56, in 1968, '67, they appointed him to that board, with one of the members that we wanted. And the reason that they did that was very simple. Esau was a part of SCLC, with Dr. King and nonviolence, I was a part of what they called the Black Power movement, Stokely Carmichael was a part of my, my group. Matter of fact, Stokely Carmichael came straight from Cuba to Johns Island in 1967. And that solidified the fact that I was a communist, because he came from a communist country straight to Johns Island. So they knew that Esau, and they appointed Esau so that Esau and I was going to have a fight. Because Esau would say that he was not, he was non-militant, non-violent, and folks were saying that I was violent. And the reason that they probably said that I was violent, because I said that �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 6 I'm not going to allow anybody to hit me. And they had a problem with that Mary? (off topic regarding phone call) WS: And anyway, and so go ahead Mary. And Esau, because I went and I spoke to Esau about that, and I told him he was a lot more militant than I was, because everywhere that I went, I had guys with me with guns. You know, he'd been all kinds of places by himself, just by himself; meeting with white people at ten, eleven o'clock at night, by himself. I always had some folks, some protection around me, I never had that kind of guts. And he understood that, and he got on that school board and did a heck of a job. And we had the smoothest integration at our school over there than any of the places in Charleston County. The black militant groups are the ones that starting organizing the hospital workers. So SCLC, none of those people was involved. They just didn't want to have anything to do with us. And they also told the mayor, Mayor [J. Palmer] Gaillard at that particular point, that the mayor didn't have to worry about it, because none of them, none of the black leaders in Charleston was involved with the hospital workers. And so the mayor, they sort of ignored what was happening around them until it got, really got out of hand. They had, at that point, they had even things like, only four blacks in the whole city of Charleston could go to talk to the mayor, so if you wanted to talk to the mayor or had any problem, you had to go through these blacks. And I told them in a meeting one night, you know, why couldn't everybody have access? They end up with me being a very, very bad person. They had a petition, the black leaders got a petition against me, went to Columbia, to the governor, and asked him not to certify an election that I'd won on Johns Island, Wadmalaw or James Island because I was just a violent and a bad person. I was working at a mattress factory, at that time I'd been working at a mattress �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 7 factory about twelve, fourteen years. Was married, had a bunch of children, and all that, but it still made me a bad person, and the reason I was a bad person, that I would not say that I would just totally let people beat me up. So we got to organizing, and started organizing in Mr. Barrett's house. We asked Mrs. Mary Moultrie to bring a person, and the other five ladies to bring a person, so they brought five. So we ended up with twelve in the beginning. And we asked that twelve to bring one extra the next week, so we had about twenty-four people. And we started organizing, and we went in the DPO hall, which was the tobacco workers' hall, and that's how we got started. KT: So this is still months before SCLC was on the scene, or 1199? WS: This was almost a year before that. We were organizing before Dr. King got killed. When Dr. King was shot in April of '68, we was in the DPO hall organizing at that particular time, and Mr. Isaiah Bennett came to us while we were organizing and said to us that, you know, Dr. King was shot, but he was not dead. And then, you know, we kept on organizing, and then he came back a little bit later and said Dr. King had died. We had a leader, we had a heck of a good group of leaders, but we had one, Otis Robinson, who was a black Muslim leader here. And he was the speaker, I mean, he could motivate people. He was the one that came up with the theme, thing that you know, "I Am Somebody." Because they were talking about the hospital workers being non-professional workers, and he went down to tell them, you are professional, you know? You do all of this stuff for the patient. You are professional, you are somebody. And then somebody took it from there, but he was the one that started that. I just, I got into, he was just asking the question about how long before SCLC and them got involved about a year or more that we did. We started organizing, I think it was November or December of '67. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 8 MM: It was, yeah. It was December '67, when the five nurses were terminated. WS: And at that time, I used to put out a small paper called the Low Country Newsletter that we used to do, an underground newspaper from Johns Island. I don't know if any of you ever heard of the American Friends Service, a Quaker outfit out of Pennsylvania, who's been involved in so many changes. And, you know, they're the ones that started Penn Center in Beaufort and all that. And they had a press in a building in North Carolina almost as big as this room. It was an old, old press. And we bought it, and we put it in a house way out in the woods on Johns Island, and we had a white guy that was working for us, Roger Phenix, and he was a brilliant brilliant guy, and he could make plate for that press out of cardboard. So we would strip it out of our work, everybody that was there was working a full time job, and then we would meet at night. You know, somebody smoked marijuana, somebody drank moonshine, other drank good liquor, and we just spent four, five hours putting a paper out. But by the time, you know, four, five hours passed, we had a paper. KT: So he came down from North Carolina to help set up the press, or you would take it up there? WS: No, they brought the press in pieces, and Roger and them knew how to set it up, we set it up on Johns Island. KT: Because you couldn't go to any legitimate business in town to get your newsletter printed. WS: No. Matter of fact, when we got started with the newsletter, we would run into, talking to a young group of people like this is kind of hard, because there's some ancient stuff. We had what they called a mimeograph machine, back in those days. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 9 [?]: I know what that is. WS: And we had to type what we call a stencil, and so what we would do when we first started the newsletter, we had one of our members working at the Navy yard. So we would type up the stencil, and he would take it to the Navy yard, and he would sneak it in with the other stuff and have it run off, and then bring out 200 copies out of the Navy yard. So that's how we got it out before we got the press. It's sort of getting away from the hospitals, and everybody talks about the hospital strike, which I always have problems with, because it was a hospital workers' organization. We were trying to organize people for the purpose of trying to better themselves. We looked at putting together supermarket, we had folks to register to vote, we had all kinds of high ambition with that union and folks kept talking about the hospital workers' organization, because we were saying to folks that, you know, the doctors got a union, an organization. The nurses got a union, the lawyers got one. Every group in this country that's any profession, got it, got all--the mayors got a group, you know? All the mayors meet and make decisions with lawyers and stuff. The only people that don't have that right is poor people, at the bottom. Hospital workers don't have that right. Right now the sanitation workers don't have that right. That was the thing that we wanted to change, and they would say that the union, that the union is illegal in the state of South Carolina, that the government can't recognize a union. KT: And Ms. Simmons, you were organizing at the County hospital. Were you facing basically the same kinds of issues? Rosetta Simmons: Same, same issues. No, no difference, just a different complex, that's about it but no difference. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 10 KT: And had you had any history of activism before 1968, '69? RS: No, no. KT: No? How about as part of the Charleston movement of '63, with the protests on King Street, anything like that? RS: No, I was just docile and nice. (laughs) But things were, you know, at, where you work, you see those small things, when you looking at and see the big things, there's small things that's growing, you know, erupted into a strike like at the university. KT: Others should jump in, too, with questions. RS: I'm Rosetta Simmons, from Charleston Memorial Hospital. It was Charleston County Hospital then, it's Charleston Memorial Hospital now. WS: It's totally dead now. (overlap) RS: It's been changed to Kindred Long Term from a Medical University, use the long term patients, who need the nursing skill, and be sent to a nursing home, so they use that facilities for those long-term patients who are on ventilators and stuff like that. Female voice: How long was it after y'all walked out, before you got your jobs back, before you were reinstated? MM: It was a hundred days, we were out, like, a hundred days. Female voice: But now you walked out in December. Was that the five quit? MM: No, we didn't look at it then. (overlap) Female voice: Oh, I was thinking you walked out when you went to Mr. Saunders. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 11 WS: No, no, that was a different group of people. MM: Yeah, that group started the ball rolling. After we went to Mr. Saunders, and we got together with the five people, and they had grievances. So we found out that everybody had a grievance, and that's where we got that initial group back. Mr. Saunders and Reginald Barrett, and them from Department of Health, Education and Welfare, after they got those five back together, we continued meeting. And we found out that that was not just an isolated case, that was widespread, throughout the hospital. And there were all kinds of grievances that people had. You know, it was not just being fired by students, but it was a lot of discrimination, was a lot of heavy workload, was nurses, they're referring to blacks as monkey grunts, and all sorts of things that they had to either tolerate it or you're fired. But we didn't have no means of grieving, you know, if you had a grievance, you know, that was your business. You had no place to take it. WS: They didn't even have job descriptions. No, they had no job, you know, and you raise a question for Mrs. Moultrie when they walked out. They didn't walk out, they got fired. Those people that, those ten, and Mrs. Moultrie, got fired. MM: Yeah, twelve, twelve of us got fired. WS: And we were doing something with the organizing the whole time, telling everybody that an injury to one was an injury to all. An injury to one was an injury to all. So then they fired those twelve, that really put us in a spot. Because we were not prepared to strike. And the SCLC was here, and even the union was, but we were not prepared to strike. And the hospital, with the political wing, had hired a labor lawyer from Greenville. They decided if they fired those twelve, which were the leaders, and then even if they strike, they would get everybody back except for the people that they didn't want back. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 12 That was the game plan. And they did, so they fired those, and they were assured that within, you know, ten or twelve days, everything was going to be back to normal. But again, we also had our own plans, and Doctor referred to it a little bit because we organized the community. And we had people out there, and we also made sure that everybody that was working there, because they tried to, they had buses, to try to carry a busload of people into the hospital, so they can have their labor there, and because we sort of followed that up a good bit. We knew where the people lived, you know, how to talk to their families, and those kind of stuff. And we had some pretty rough fellows and women working with us, that nobody even knew who they were. Course, then you got that look on your face, is anything turning, is anything turning over there? I like to watch [Everybody Loves] Raymond, there's nothing going on up here. Joi Mayo: That was, I know in the article we read, they talked about how, I don't know if some, one of the people involved is telling them that, you know, it was okay to have, if you have like a record or something, like, you should get involved any way you can. And it was almost like, almost like guerilla tactics. Like, anyway you can, kind of get at the people. You know what I mean? WS: Yeah, you're not being as blunt as you could be here. Yeah, you know, we were organized to do whatever was necessary to do that, and we had the FBI and folk come, in fact, they came to me and, you know, talked about how to avoid violence and all of that stuff, and, you know, and I told them that we in Charleston was not going to throw bricks at tanks, like folk did all over the country, that we were prepared for war. So you're saying exactly what it is. And of course, the beautiful thing about this is Mrs. Moultrie, or Ms. Simmons, they knew nothing about those. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 13 (off-topic) WS: And one of the things, that the questions that you, Mrs. Moultrie or Ms. Simmons, or none of the hospital workers knew anything about this group of people, that the group of people that we had organized worked independently. So there, and we believed since early that if you didn't know something, you can't tell nobody. So it was not necessary for everybody to know. I mean, we used to have meetings with that group, we would have it in a, in a joint or something, right up near the jukebox, so we could talk there and, you know, even if the FBI recorded it, they couldn't, you can't do that these days, because they've got machines now that don't care what, how you do it, they can decipher what went on. But at that time, they didn't have those kind of, type of stuff out. So the people that met and did the work like Ms. Simmons, that had walked the street during the day and did the picketing, and during the night when there were curfews, there was other folk that was out there. When Reverend [Ralph D.] Abernathy was about to go to jail, you know, we had a group of those people went to jail. These guys that we had working with us been in jail many times before, and when they went in jail, they took over the jail. You know, they became trustees, they went in the kitchen, and we wanted to make sure that Abernathy and them had protection when they went to jail. And none of that stuff had ever been talked about in that sense. Female voice: So you're quoted as saying, every time that the power that be got rid of the person that they thought was bad, the next one was worse. WS: Mm-hm. Female voice: And what did you, how did they get rid of? WS: Either they would have them arrested, but sometimes they would buy them, �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 14 buy them off. But they had a methodology of getting rid of the leader. And what we've been trying to do, and still have not been totally successful is to establish leadership instead of a leader, because you can always get rid of a leader, but if you have leadership, getting rid of one person you haven't done any good. And we sort of taught them a lesson, with even the SNCC with Stokely Carmichael. Because they wanted to get rid of Stokely Carmichael, and they got H. Rap Brown who was totally crazy. I mean, (laughs) they would prefer Stokely than have Rap. So it's that kind of process. Female voice: So how did you stick around? WS: I don't understand the question. Female voice: (laughs) Well, I mean, if you, they didn't buy you off or get rid of you. You're still here, and how is it that you prevailed? WS: Because most of the people that was involved in these things normally was either from someplace else or they were students. I was from here, I was in the church, had a family, worked in a factory, you know? And also was able to educate my bosses about what I was doing, everything I did, they knew. I used to get arrested, almost on a weekly basis for a while. And I started borrowing the truck from the mattress factory to go home at nights, so they wouldn't know what I was driving, because they would stop me. I'd been put in jail for muffler, for lights, for inspection stickers, for not dimming my lights, for brakes, those kind of stuff. And that's what, that's how they do. Female voice: Just wear you down. WS: Yeah, that's, that's how they do it. And, you know, and folk give up, doing that. We met during the time when the strike was going on, the head person here was a guy and SLED was, Pete Strom and he came to meet with me, and he wanted to ask me, �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 15 called me at the mattress factory, asked me would I meet with him, and I told, "Well, you know, you're the head man. If you say you got to meet, I'll come meet you." He wanted to meet up in the north area, and I worked, the mattress factory was on 28 Anson Street. We're going to meet at five o'clock that afternoon. I could, when I left Anson Street, I could see cops lined up everywhere, all the way up to North Charleston where we were going to meet. And I talked to a lot of young people, even at the James Island High School the other night, other day. When you're young, you think you're so smart, you know? And you, you only get stupid as you get older, but young folk got so much sense. And I went up there to meet the chief and I got to the car where I saw that they had the cops all over the place in the corner of the parking lot. Then I got out my car, I opened the trunk, and I just went into the trunk. Now, that doesn't make no sense at all. And I just stood there. And all the cops, they didn't know what the hell, was I going to come out of there with a gun, or what I, what I was going to do. And, you know, that was just a dumb thing to do. But that's what I did, and I, then I walked around and I closed the trunk, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. (laughs) KT: Were you deliberately taunting them? WS: Huh, yeah. (everyone laughs) Yeah, you know, again, even with Mrs. Moultrie and Simmons, some of them folk that were, if you weren't willing to die with that thing, you couldn't do it. You had to be willing to give up all of it, and that's how some folk was so much at peace with themselves, because some of us, two, three of us that were there, didn't expect to live through that. So, you know, they had spies in that meeting that we had, they had Clifford Smith, you remember Clifford Smith, who was the IRS's black agent, and he was the informant in the group working with us. And we �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 16 had really caught him spying and doing some stuff, and we had a trial for him, some of them talking about we tried him, and found him guilty. And scared the hell out of him, and I've never seen anybody cry, where water just come out their eyes and don't touch nothing, just roll, and just keep coming down. And, you know, he just figured we were going to do something to him, because he lived on Spring Street. And he went, and of course he got SLED, and SLED then took him and his family out of town, and some of his fraternity brothers went around there that night and got beat up at his house, because they had cops in the house. They thought we were going to come by. But, you know, we could wait, for we had no rush to do anything, we just wanted to scare him. But my point is, he was in the car with chief Strom when I met with him, and they had proof that there was some folk that wanted to kill me, and that they wanted to make sure that they could provide some protection for me. And I told him, "You know, y'all didn't protect King, y'all didn't protect Kennedy, and the hell I'll allow you to protect me. I got my own crew for protection." And we knew the people, Mary and I talked to them, but they were the union, white union folk in Mt. Pleasant that had the plan against what we were doing, and they had some plans against me, but we were prepared to deal with that. And I would not accept any protection from them. Chief Strom and I got to be kind of friendly after that. We met a couple times after that, and I told him about being arrested so much. And he gave me a card and said that, you know, "Anytime anybody arrests you, you just use this card and call this number." And I refused to take the card, because there was so many of us were getting arrested. And that was another way of how they got rid of leaders, because if I had used that card and called, and said they're going to stop people from arresting me, then they would use that, that I was involved somehow with law �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 17 enforcement, that I was an informant or something. So I refused to accept that. Anyway Mrs. Moultrie got to go in a few minutes. Christina Shedlock: When the hospital was segregated, did you perform different duties than, like, a white nurse's aide? Did you work with white patients, or could you only work with--? MM: During that time we had very few white nurse's aides, but the few that were there didn't get the heavy workloads that we got. And it was my understanding that they were paid differently. Nothing I could prove, you know, but I was told that they were making more than the dollar thirty an hour that we were making. And they certainly didn't work as hard as we did, so it was a difference. When we came out on strike, we had two nursing assistants that had been up and down with us all the time we were organizing, and they were given jobs at the VA Hospital that they didn't apply for, just to get them out of our group. Female voice: Did y'all feel like your lives were threatened with what you were doing? MM: Oh, we were, yeah, we were threatened, you know? Female voice: Is that right? Wow. MM: Phone calls, letters, you know. But I guess I was crazy at that time, because it didn't phase me. I knew what I had to do and I just did it. Female voice: I know in the article you talked about how some of the Charleston blacks didn't really support the strike, and I don't know, one of the quotes is like Dr. Thomason, or something, is there a reason why these people didn't support the strike? MM: Well, at first, a lot of the blacks were reluctant about what we were doing. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 18 Some of them thought that it was unnecessary, that we didn't need to be out on strike, and the ones who could go back to work should go back to work, and those of us who they refused to take back should get jobs elsewhere. But as we got support from different places, and people started getting on board, we basically got everybody on our side, after they saw exactly what was going on, the fact that we weren't giving up. And we were predominantly women with lots of children. We had some women out there that had about ten children, and it was somebody's family, somebody's wife, you know? They’re in somebody's church, so they got on board like that. And Mr. Saunders, I didn't say we were all women, now. WS: No, but y'all go there sometimes. MM: Yeah. (laughs) I didn't go there. WS: We had a real divide on who there were, and it got to, because that's, again, how people divide you. The hospital workers was about hospital workers. It was not about women, it was not about men, it was about the workers. But at some point, somebody started writing, "These, all of these women got together and did all of this good stuff." And that was not, that was not the truth. There was a lot of, the orderlies and cleanup folk, and everybody, all of these folk was involved. But the division came later on. The other thing that you raise a question about, the people coming on board, we began to get so much support from other places, from Washington, from New York, from Detroit. I mean, these folks had to come on board at that particular point, because folk, and then we were doing them the same way like George Bush tried to do with the American people. We were saying that if you're not with us then you're against us, you know? And that also continued to bring people on. At a point, when they saw it was a �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 19 possibility that it's going to change, a lot of them came on board. And, you know, we start this thing saying that the State of South Carolina was saying that it did not come under Federal guidelines to pay minimum wage. They didn't have to pay minimum wage. There was an article in yesterday's paper where our state government just made a statement again that the House and Senate, that they are going to resist any Federal laws that come in the stimulus package or anything. They're not going to accept any, those stuff that unconstitutional, the same thing they did in 1860, the same thing that they did during 1968-69, when they refused to pay minimum wage to the workers. This is a hell of a state. And nothing has changed in the state of South Carolina. It's the same thing that they've been doing, doing it over and and over and over again. Nothing has ever changed in South Carolina because South Carolina thought it was a good thing to do for its people. Everything in South Carolina that ever changes has been because Federal government or somebody raised enough hell, or they had to kill enough people to make the change, whether it was at South Carolina State College or wherever. That's, that's where South Carolina was working, and it's not about change at all. And that's one of the things that I keep saying over and over to younger people, that y'all are going to have the problem, because this kind of thing is not going to go away. All of this stuff that Mrs. Moultrie and them fought for and did, and went about, basically, the hospital's basically back to the same. The suffering over there is just as bad now or worse than it was then, and the people over there that's working, the blacks that working there are coward, totally. They want somebody to go over there, or come to Mrs. Moultrie, "Go over there and beat them up for us," because of their mistreatments. And, you know, if you get mistreated, you'll have to stand up, yourself. It has to start with you. There ain't going to be no more Martin �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 20 Luther King. I wouldn't allow nobody to be a Martin Luther King. I mean, the kind of suffering that Dr. King and people that did that stuff went through, there's no reason for it, for people to have to suffer that way, when people could collectively do what's necessary for themselves. Female voice: What kind of complaints are y'all getting about how they're running things over there right now? WS: Mrs. Moultrie? MM: They're just back to where we were, when we were in the hospital. People still getting fired, they still haven't got a voice. There's no grievance procedure, but it's not working. You know, if a person is fired, they come back with a lot of trumped up charges, and they're still fired. So they've still got the heavy workload, some of the nurse's assistants. What are they called now, they're not called nurse’s assistants. Yeah, but anyway, they've got heavy workloads, and the salary has increased, but it always can be better. I'm not saying that they're making any money over there because they're not. And it's just a mess over there. WS: And they all seem to be--. MM: They're still, they're being disrespected. WS: And the other thing that they created was a situation where they can have permanent temporary workers. I mean, they're really abusing people through that. Folk got a job working every day, three, four years as a temporary employee, you know? And, and they're not subject to any benefits, they can get fired, they don't have any kind of grievance or anything. And that, again, is South Carolina. That's not the Medical University. They're doing that all over South Carolina. Any way that they can hurt �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 21 workers, South Carolina does it. We've got people over there that have been over there twenty-five years that came to Mrs. Moultrie to complain the other day, that they're going to downsize the department, and they're going to get rid of the one that's been there twenty-five years and keep the one that's been there five years. The reason for that, the one at twenty-five years is making more money, got all these benefits up to the time that you might get sick, so you don't have to pay nothing for this worker, you just let them go. So we're getting those kind of complaints, they're coming through here now. But nobody, none of these groups are willing to do anything collectively. They want somebody to come over and--. MM: And there's a lot unfair, one young lady told me that when you get a job, going through orientation, you're told if you join a union, you talk to anybody at the union place or any union activities, you're automatically terminated. Female voice: Isn't that illegal? MM: I thought, think it's illegal. WS: There's nothing illegal in South Carolina. (laughs) MM: You know, I just try to tell them, look, you know, you ain't got no chains on you, so you're free. And I could see if you're doing union activities when you should be working, but when you're off your job, you're free to do whatever. But they're so afraid, a lot of people ask me, why this fear? And the only difference I could see at this point, that the young people have invested in so much. A lot of them got so many credit cards that they're maxed out. They've got cards that they really can't afford, and it's a lot of things that they're so afraid of losing. And it's just a mess. So they have to stay in and take the abuse. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 22 WS: Well, we would even say to some of them, if you stand up, we'll back you. But they wouldn't even do that. Because we could support anybody that's been mistreated over there. There's enough organizations, enough things around to make that happen. But their fear is so heavy, all they want to do is come, secretly give Mrs. Moultrie a piece of paper, and give her the background of what went on and so, you know, get Batman or somebody to go over there and straighten it out. KT: I was just wondering, how were you able to balance out with all these, the influx of organizers from the union, from SCLC, other outsiders coming in, how are you able to balance all of the competing agendas within the context of the organizing struggle? Was that challenging? MM: You mean, during the hospital strike? KT: During the strike. MM: Yeah, no. (laughs) KT: No, you felt people were mostly on the same page? MM: Not, huh? There was so much that I didn't even see. You know I didn't even entertain who was in charge or what. The only thing I knew that I had lost my job, and I was trying to do what I needed to do to get my job back. So, in terms of the structure of the union, and who was who and what was what, at that point, I wasn't there with that. So I walked the picket line, I did a lot of traveling, you know, soliciting support for the strike. I didn't sit in an office behind a desk, trying to, you know. (overlap) Yeah, excuse me, when I went on strike, I had some shoes, but when the strike was over, there was a hole in the bottom of my shoes, you know? So that's the kind of things I did. RS: And you know, we knew what we had to do as the workers, you know? We �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 23 had to be out there and make ourselves seen, you know? Had to be just there, visible, on the line. Because we had picket lines that was, actually, we didn't have picket lines at twelve midnight, well, we did at twelve midnight, but we didn't have at six o'clock in the morning. It would start again, it would start all over again. And we had to organize those picket lines, to keep somebody always there, visible. WS: But, you know, there were that division, that you raise a question about. The thing that we did, to make sure that the workers were shielded from those kinds of thing that was going on, there were, we had some real difference of opinion with SCLC and some stuff. We had difference of opinion with the union in a lot of stuff, and we was able to work through some of those, some we were not able to work through. But the end results were more important than some of those things. But we saw a lot of things at that time that could've been handled better, and we could not resolve those things. But then again, the workers knew nothing about those kind of stuff. They're talking about the twelve, six o'clock, and of course the curfew kicked in at six or seven, so, but we had people meeting with folk. I used to meet with the vice president of the hospital at ten o'clock or eleven o'clock at night, whatever. Mr. Huff used to be the vice president of the hospital. We would talk about the difference between what we were trying to do and what his trustee board. We were able to eventually work out where the trustees would meet with Mrs. Moultrie and then a group of people up in Moncks Corner. And that was something that brought some semblance of change and respect to that process. But that was a long time, that was about seventy, eighty days before that meeting occurred. KT: Yeah, but that meeting was a breakthrough. WS: It was. But again, it just really took a lot, and what we did is that nobody �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 24 from SCLC or the union was at that meeting, but I was there. But, you know, Mrs. Moultrie and them had their orders. They had ten, I think ten things that they wanted on the agenda. And what they did at that point, the trustees had reached, I think eight, eight of them. Now, there's two of them that they, anything they got to that they didn't agree with, I wouldn't let them argue about it, just move on to what you agree with. And then there were two of them that they couldn't agree with, and we were supposed to meet the next week or something, down at the municipal auditorium and resolve those two, and of course the president of the hospital took a different turn, and he started talking about the professionals and the nurses, and the doctors is going to walk off if those twelve people are brought back to the hospital. That was his thing. And that's how the Nixon cabinet got involved in that, at that particular point, because they wanted, if the hospitals were on strike and hurting the whole, his whole administration was hurting everybody, and he wanted it resolved, and that's how it sort of got resolved, when they told him to cut off the money from HEW to the hospital. There was a lot of stuff that was going on that has not ever been written about or talked about. KT: The background, the kind of back-channel negotiations? WS: Yeah, you know, who was doing what, that way, who had their own agenda. And the governor came to me in, this was in '69 when this thing happened. Governor McNair came to me, I think it was about '98, 1998 and apologized to me for stuff that went on, and thanked me for that stuff didn't go as bad as it could. Because one of the things that didn't happen, nobody got killed, nobody got shot. And that was a very unusual thing. We had a chief of police here that was brand new, Chief Conroy had just came. He was a professional guy, a Marine, and he told folks nobody would shoot a gun �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 25 until he ordered it. He locked me up and all that good stuff, but he, he was pretty fair. Mrs. Moultrie? MM: No, that's about it. You had a few more minutes. Female voice: I had a quick question. You mentioned that a lot of the workers, female workers had children and lots of children. And how did children play a role? We saw in the video that there were some children involved. MM: Yes, a lot of the workers brought their children to the union hall, because we had people there that cooked, you know, every day, and they would just bring the whole, you know, their whole family of children there, and they would eat, and they did games, and you know, we did activity things there for them. And we also had them out on the picket line, picket line. We led a group of children, I think Jack Bradford. RS: That picture's on the wall up front, too. MM: And some people marched, even in the marches, and kids in the stroller and stuff. So the kids were visible. WS: You know, there's a lot of young people that got involved in that strike. I mean, there was a lot of [school] bus drivers, at that time, students would drive a bus. A lot of the bus drivers brought their bus downtown and just parked it and joined that strike. You can imagine having forty, fifty buses. (laughs) You know, so that there was so many young high school students got involved, and directly involved in that strike. It was the only thing except for Hurricane Hugo that I saw that brought the community together. I mean, we had the beauty shops doing people's hair for free, and barber shops cutting for free. The ministers came together, white and black ministers that had never got together. The Catholic priests did so much, I mean, it stood up a lot, and there were some sisters �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 26 and stuff. So, you know, there was a lot of good things came out of that, with people that had never worked together before. We understood, some of us that did some of the planning, we understood that the thing that drives everything, that especially drives Charleston, is the economics. And when you close down Charleston from April to July, billions of dollars. When you've got all these hotels and fancy restaurants, nobody, totally empty. I mean, that, that was something. You know, there was a Greek guy that had a store right on the corner of Calhoun and St. Philip Street. MM: Kelly? WS: Yeah, he put a sign in his window, said, "Kelly ain't mad at nobody." (laughs) And a lot of the merchants did that, and then nothing happened to them, because they just said, we're not involved in what's going on. But it really, brought some respect to people that never had respect before. I don't know that the folks that was in charge would never believe that poor people could stop the city of Charleston, you know? One of the things that they sort of promised they're not going, it'll never happen again, because they're going to make sure that they would work with people and find out stuff in advance, but that's not happening. It's going back the same way, and they just believe that. And, you know, to me, again, although it just went down that way, this state is still also into a class society. There's a lot of things, there are a lot of poor, we found there was even some of the poor whites who was working in the hospital, and they had all kinds of special favors, special restrooms and lounges and all that stuff. But we did some studies later on, they weren't making no money. They wasn't making the money, but they had this special privilege over blacks, so that divide was very important. And you can make the Black Muslim and the Ku Klux Klan fight, the people in charge wins. You �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 27 know, so I've always thought about the Klan, basically, I used to attend Klan rallies during that hospital strike, they used to have Klan rallies on Johns Island and Beaufort. I never was afraid of the Klan. They had [the power to] kill somebody, but they don't have nothing to do with schools, they don't have nothing, no power in health, they don't have no power over employment, over nothing, except for a little bit of violence. My enemy's been the government, and that general assembly that has the power to pass laws, and decide where I go to school, what I do and how I do it. And that's what got Dr. King killed. Because he was fixing to do that Poor People's March on Washington. He was bringing all poor people together, talking about what's going on with poor people, and that is one of the things that got him killed. The FBI got involved, and that just wiped him out. Mrs. Moultrie, you said you had another meeting, so you're fixing to go? MM: Yeah, if--. KT: Well, we'll save you pizza, and we'll say goodbye before we head out. MM: Yeah, okay. (laughs) KT: Because you're going to be in the front room. (off-topic) Female voice: What was the Klan's response to the strike? WS: I don't know they had a problem with the strike. I used to attend Klan rallies-. Female voice: That's amazing that you did that. WS: Yeah. Stupid. (laughs) You know, you're twenty, twenty-five, you're just so brilliant, you know? You get to be fifty, sixty, realize you know very little, and you learn how to shut up. But, you know, the Klan, [we] used to go to the rallies. They would have, �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 28 you know, they all, "Got the niggers on the TV, and the Jews are running all this, and we've got to shut them down!" They don't even have shoes. Kids ain't got nothing. Just poor leadership, and they've got a flag and Christianity, you know? And just, it's, anytime, right now, we're doing an organizing that's getting a little bit away from, but it's still the same thing. But on Johns Island right now, that I did on Johns Island, we're trying to block a road being built across Johns Island that's, and what I did is I was able to get the guy that I am working with, his great, his grandfather, I used to work on that farm. I used to make a dollar a day on the farm, and what I am saying to them the last two years, we've got the same problem. The original people of Johns Island, white and black, got the same problem with the mayor coming in and annexing all of this stuff, and they're going to, right now, they got seventeen million dollars or something to do the airport on Johns Island. My church sits right there, been there since 1869, and that airport's getting closer and closer to the church, you know? And eventually, the church is going to be gone. So those are the kind of, and I've got a couple of the guys that was in the Klan that I knew, are part of this organization that I got, trying to stop some stuff, you know, Maybank Highway from being widened and some of this stuff, you know? Because we've got the same problem. We got the same enemy. And what I don't allow us to do, we don't talk about religion, and we don't talk about politics. We just talk about the issue. And if you know a politician that's interested in the issue, then you can raise that person's name. But they don't get involved in religion and politics, because that is a divider. And we don't use those, those divider, then, then you don't have no problem. But this hospital thing started a lot of things, and the thing that most people don't realize, and I'm meeting with some folks today, some black people today, and they're talking about how, how we're going �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 29 back, and how we're losing so much stuff. And I was trying to make sure that they understood the fact that when you learn something, your enemy also learns something. And none of us have given our enemy credit. They've got the best collection methodology now, getting information. They've got the best methodology of dividing people. I mean, there's so many things that are happening right now, that they can prevent folk from getting together, and it's just that simple. We meet here with the sanitation workers on Friday, and the people that are in charge of the sanitation department drive up and down the highway or street out there, to make sure they know who's here. And then what happens is they go back and talk to one or two of them, and then the other one is afraid of these two that they saw talking to the foreman, because they say they're being an informant. So they start that fear and that division within the people that really need help. I mean, folk are, you can tell, folk are getting hurt, I mean, or being mistreated, the same as the hospital workers. And we had a sanitation strike the same way, after that hospital strike. And things supposed to have changed that time. And what they did, and this has proved what I'm saying, what they did, they got all of the white leadership of the sanitation department, which folks saw as the enemy, and they put in black leaders. The blacks are now worse, treating blacks worse than the white leaders did. It's the system. It's not the color, it's the system. And, you know, and these guys, the black guys are really being just brutal on the people working. And right now it's almost a third of the people that work at the sanitation department are women. Women are driving these trucks and doing the collections and stuff. Got the same, like Mrs. Moultrie was just talking about, got three or four children they bring sometimes, they've got to bring the children here to the meeting. And as the one, you know, they would say that you have to, they're going to �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 30 fire her if she don't get to work on, right on time at six o'clock, she takes a seven year old child and leaves it in front of a school with nobody at the school, so she can get to work. And the supervisor, black supervisor is looking for an excuse to get rid of her, because she would speak up. So things have not changed, things have not gotten better. They've got more sophisticated, and the methodology of doing it has gotten different, but the suffering is still the same. And they got people working in the sanitation department, saying, like they did at the Medical College, that they have people working there that have been in trouble before, or that the education level is pretty low. And the fear of losing that job and can't get another one, and now the sanitation department hasn't talked about this, but they're doing the same thing like the Medical College now, they've got people on permanent, permanent temporary. So they've got, they brought folk in that they don't have to give them anything, and they can't really be a problem with this kind of organization. KT: They're doing that at sanitation as well now? WS: Right, right now. Which as I speak. Female voice: They're doing that at a lot of places. WS: Yeah. Male voice: Decreased benefits. KT: Do you, you know, I'd imagine that, you know, among your coworkers, that the strike was hard on family relationships. I mean, did you have, you know, friends whose families were stressed by, you know, a hundred days of being out on strike, and the, the picketing, the arrests? What was the personal toll that the strikers suffered? RS: You know, there was some, there was stress. Stress just knowing that you �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 31 don't have a job. Number one. But they know that they were out there because of the conditions that they were suffering while they were working. So the stress, then, outweighed the, what they had to do, in other words. They knew that they had to be there because of better treatment for themselves, and respect for one person. And that was my main goal, dignity and respect. You do that, as a human being. And those were my, my little petty things, they're not petty, little things that I had, for me, to think about. You know, if you are not treated as a human being, you're treated like an animal. So you needed to, I mean, they needed to know, management needed to know that we are human beings, and we ought to be treated with dignity and respect. Money will come later, but just those things, being treated as human beings and being treated with dignity and with respect. And I think, when I think about all of what we went through, we got some respect, in a sense. Monies, a few pennies came. But it was not overall the big thing. The big thing, as far as I was concerned, is that we were being treated as a human being, and before that, we weren't. You know, you were told to do so you did it, not in a comfortable way, but as if you're just another thing, in other words, and this is why my, this was my, my baby, being treated as a human being with dignity and with respect. WS: But, you know, and something did come out of that. The Human Affairs Commission grew out of that, and that's a grievance mechanism for everybody that worked for the State of South Carolina. Folk are not utilizing it this year, but it's there. That was set up after they ended the strike, that was given. And then, to go back to your question, Dr. Kerry, there was some family, we had some broken homes that came out of that strike. We had some unwanted pregnancies came out of that strike. A lot of things happened, but that's the toll that comes. We have a few people, some SCLC or the union �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 32 workers tell them, you don't need to be here, you need to be in New York someplace. So they hired up and left, and suffered. But, you know, it was minimal, based on the fact that we had good people involved, that we also could counsel with some of the folk that had had problems. But there were problems. Lisa Wu: Y'all were in a lot of danger. Did your family members, wife or husband, ever kind of wear you down, try to like, don't go out tonight and things like that? WS: You know some of that occurred with some folk. My wife was working at the cigar factory at that time, and she was working at night. So I used to have, we would have somebody to drive behind her going to work, and stuff like that. Because there was a lot of those kinds of threats, and things like that. But again, we had people that were strong enough, and when the ministers really got involved, and the black community is a very religious community, we had the kind of leadership and ministry at that time that is good, and then folks could stand up, but there was a lot of threats, you know, and promises. And as a matter of fact, what we used to do, we would threaten people back. So, and you know, and it's funny, but it worked. Because a lot of people that threaten people really don't worry about themselves. But if you make them begin to worry about themselves and their family, it changes a lot of things. (off-topic) WS: We made some promises. You know, if something happened to so-and-so. I mean, the guy that said that, you know, if anything happened to Bill Saunders, he would come after him. Ivy Farr: (overlap) It seems like that maybe brought the community together too, �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 33 you were saying if a leader went to jail, there would be other people who went to jail with him and made sure that things were--. WS: You know, when I went to jail with the hospital strike workers, I just really knew, everybody was depending on me, I was telling a group the other night. And they put us in a cell, right at dark, and the cell was kinda underground with no windows, no nothing. And scared the hell out of me. I, normally I don't get scared that way, but I was, claustrophobia and stuff sat in on me, and I just, I'm a person that talks all the time. But I had nothing to say, but there were guys that we had involved with the workers, that these were all workers at the hospital. And one of them started telling jokes, the other one started singing, and I mean, then they started doing this, and it just really got, I didn't have to say anything. But they took it over that this was joking, singing beautiful songs and stuff. And what they did, they took us out of that dark cell and moved us into, up into a light, almost Biblical in a light up cell, but these guys continued to sing until three o'clock in the morning, when folk came and took us out of underground in that cell. And one of the things that's so religious about, if you've got any religion at all, there is a purpose for all of us. All of us got a talent. And if we stick around, there will come a time when you use that talent. Some of the guys that did that singing and talking, telling jokes in that jail was with us for about a year and half, and never said anything. They were just always there. But at that point, right time, when it was time for them to do something, they did. And so that, that's a lot of history. Mrs. Moultrie, you know, she went through a lot. She would not even attempt to go back through what she went through, but she went through more than anybody with that strike. And a lot of stuff that, it was so bad, she just had to block out a lot of stuff that started coming back to her in the last six months or so, �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 34 because she went through a lot. And then they had her traveling all over the country, speaking other places while this thing was going. But, you know, we had a lady that assisted, Miss Alston. RS: Martha? WS: Not Martha, not Martha. RS: Eva? WS: Eva Alston, she was another person that never said anything. But she was Mrs. Moultrie's bodyguard, she didn't, Moultrie didn't know that. (everyone laughs) She was a mean lady, too. I mean, she--. RS: She was. I was, I was hospitalized out there, because I lost my baby during the strike, and she came in Medical University, on Eight West, with two armored guards to make sure that I was all right. I mean, she, she scared me. I leaped out of the bed when I heard her voice. I said, "Oh my God!" She said, "I just wanted to know that you," I said, "I'm all right, I'm okay. Okay. Just, you know, you take it easy." Because she was about to take them down. I mean, she was equipped to take them down. WS: She used to have (laughs), she used, she would have a bottle of battery acid in her pocket, and she would--. (laughs) KT: She was ready to go. WS: Yes, sir, this sister was bad. She was not a speaker, she was not anybody like that, but she loved Mrs. Moultrie and Ms. Simmons and those folks, and she would do anything, she would die for any one of them. And she was, she was good, I mean. And we had so many folk in that strike that was that way. And that's one of the things that really bothers me when we talked about it, because none of those folk get any recognition �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 35 at all, none of them. None of the folk that did the really heavy lifting behind the scenes get any recognition at all. (off-topic) (food is served) KT: How long was it, because it was several weeks after the strike until you got your job back? (overlap) RS: Well, Medical went back in June. (off-topic) RS: We went back in July, county workers went back in July. (off-topic) RS: I didn't, I didn't go back until November. (overlap) (off-topic) Joi Mayo: What do your kids say about when you were involved? Do they really know what was going on? How old were they? WS: Some of our kids knew, you know, what was going, they were old enough to know what was going on, and stuff like that. My, one of my daughters right now, she teaches at James Island High School, she went to the College of Charleston, and the professor there used to just mistreat her, just awful, I mean. My office was on Morris Street, and she used to walk from the College of Charleston to tell me about it, just crying. And they would tell her, you know, "Just let your father teach you," or, "Let your father do what needs to be done." That, there's a lot of cruel stuff that went on, a lot of cruel stuff went on at The Citadel. I mean, just telling them the other day, those first blacks that went to The Citadel. I used to run a business on John’s Island called the Progressive Club, and they would come out there to stuff that we would have, black �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 36 record artists and stuff. And those guys would come and try to tear down the gas tank, or kick stuff, or bother people. Lisa Wu: You mean the Cadets? WS: Yeah. It was just the frustration, the suffering at The Citadel. They would come out and take it out on, on blacks and folk in the community rather than fight the enemies that were within The Citadel itself. Those guys caught some hell, it was really something. And one of them, I think, ended up committing suicide. That was real bad. Christina Rae Shedlock: In the article, they were talking about damage to property and firebombs. Was that people attacking the strikers' homes? It never really said. Were your homes damaged, were you? WS: No, no, and there were very few firebombs and stuff happened. Some stuff happened to some businesses, but some of it was being done by the former chief of police, I don't know if that's a part of what y'all got there. But what he did, he had a group of people from a detective agency, and they were going around robbing places, and having it blamed on the hospital workers and people doing with the hospital. They did a father and son store. You remember, Ms. Simmons, that father and son store? RS: Next to Edwards? WS: Uh-huh, yeah. Chief and them, they found that they locked some of them, Chief Conroy caught some of them and put them in jail for that. But they were blaming all of the stuff on the hospital workers, and the hospital workers told them they had nothing to do with it. But he was really a crooked guy. KT: That was the chief prior to Conroy? WS: Right. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 37 KT: So what happened? I mean, within a year, 1199 was virtually gone, right? After about a year? Was it just a matter of them pulling out, not providing sufficient resources? Where did all of this energy go in 1970, 1971? RS: Well, like I said, I went back to work, 1969, November 10, 1969. The workers from Charleston Memorial Hospital at that time went back to work on July 18, but they made it a point that I was not going to be rehired at Charleston Memorial Hospital. KT: So you were one of the last hired back. RS: I was one of the last hired back, and if it wasn't for my manager at that particular time, who gave me information that was coming in, because it, my job, my job title, there was no opening for me at that time. She kept me up to date. She was white, she was a white RN from Wadmalaw Island, as a matter of fact, is where she stayed. And I found out that they were hiring, because I'm an LPN, hiring LPNs back. And I called Mr. Black, who was the county manager at that time, that had hired us as LPNs back in the operating room, and that I needed my job back. So he told me I should call Mr. Kim, who was the hospital administrator at the time. And he said yes, there was an LPN hired in the OR, and you've got to find some other job opening. So that was a Friday, I went back to work that Monday, November 10th. It wasn't easy. It was not easy, but I made up my mind that I was going to do my work from A through Z, and we had it catalogued. So I didn't have any problems. I was working three shifts in one week, which was not hospital policy. I worked two, and I called in the third. And I decided one day, I said, you know what, they're trying, I know they're trying to get rid of me, so what I'm going to do is, the three shifts that they had assigned me, I worked it. And they quit, they quit assigning me �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 38 three shifts. From then I was, I stayed there. I did, you know I did my job, so they couldn't, I went to work on time, I punched out on time. I went when I was supposed to tour, and I did my job. So they didn't, didn't have any more tactics that they were, had planned for me, because I knew that they were trying to get rid of me, or trying to make me make a mistake, so that they could fire me. Female voice: And by three shifts, do you mean, like, they made you--? RS: Seven to three one day, three to eleven, and the next day, and the next day would be eleven to seven. And that's against hospital policy, you know? They knew that, but like I said, I didn't work it. I called in, and they decided to keep on doing it. I guess they figured they'd break me down. But I decided that I was going to do it, and see what happened, didn't decide to quit. WS: And you know she worked for the county. We didn't have any [problem] at the state, we really did a job on the state, and the state had to change at The Citadel and wherever the state owned any property, everybody came under that rule, but the county did not come under that, and they had some real people scheming that was in charge of county. A matter of fact, the same Esau Jenkins that Mrs. Moultrie was talking about, she, he made somebody go to this guy who was head of the county council over McClellanville, ten or eleven o'clock one night, and said, "Now, y'all got to do something, y'all are going to do something about the workers getting back to work." So Esau went over there, got Reverend Alston to take it, and to make some changes with that. But there's a difference in between the county and the state government. Matter of fact, that guy that did that, I mean, that he's, right now he's got a bust of him somewhere by being one of the greatest leaders in the state of South Carolina, with the county �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 39 association. I'll be surprised who the heroes are in the state of South Carolina, county of Charleston. (off-topic) KT: Are there things that you might have done differently, either personally or strategically? RS: I would not have, because like I said, you know, when you are treated badly, and there's a way where you can correct some of it, you stick with what, you know, what you have, the help that's been out here for you. Because when Medical started organizing, I wasn't aware of it until early part of '68, when I joined in with them. And I didn't realize that some of the workers who were at Memorial Hospital were receiving the same kind of treatment over there, and this was how I started organizing at Charleston Memorial Hospital. And there were really anxious to come over, to, you know, receive some help. Because help was available, you know? Like Mr. Saunders said, everybody, some people, fear is always in you when you think your job is threatened, and your economic, is more important, it is important to you, you know? And there were a lot of people who, not a lot of people, some people who were displaced because of not having a job. There were electricity problems, you know, like, not being on--. But then their family supported those who were out too, because I didn't live alone, me and my older sister lived together. So I didn't have that pressure on me, per se, economically. You know, so I knew what I was going to do, I knew what I had to do, and I was going to stay out until the end, if need be. And this is what, the attitude some of us did take. Now, there were some employees at Charleston Memorial Hospital who did not ever get rehired, because there were, we started with a hundred, and we dwindled down to sixty-nine. They hired forty- �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 40 two, and that left twenty-seven persons out. They never got rehired, so they just went and found jobs elsewhere. Joi Mayo: In the article, I know we're talking about the MUSC library, or not library, but the hospital downtown, you now since Mrs. Moultrie is here, but they were talking about how, like, some of the other people came in who were hired during the strike, and their husbands would drive them to work, you know, up to the hospital. You know, they had, like, a weapon with them, just in case, I guess, people would retaliate, since, you know, I don't know if they're breaking the strike, or, you know, they were hired late. Or how did y'all feel towards those kind of people who were, you know, kind of going against y'all? RS: Well, I can tell you, we, I found out at Memorial Hospital, that we had persons who were coming here, coming at the union hall, to the meetings, and they were going to work. So I called dietary, these couple of persons who were working, they answered the telephone. So I hung up. So the next morning, we got up at four o'clock that morning. We went because the time for them to go to work was five o'clock. Se we stationed ourselves where we could see them. They came in, and they went, you know, you know where Charleston Memorial Hospital is, right? They went to the, not Lockwood, the street, the road above that, and they came over, and then they went into the hospital. So we saw them. They came here to, they came to the union hall, and those girls was, they had two by fours, and they really wanted to put something on [them]. I said, "No, we don't do it that way." We don't. I mean, because they were scabs, is what we called them, scabs. You know, they were here receiving state benefits, they were here listening to all that was going on, and they were still going to work on the jobs. �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 41 KT: Because you could get some payment from the union if you were, you were on the picket lines. RS: You did, you did. You were. There were strike benefits available, and there was food every day, every day. KT: Do you remember how strike benefits compared to your regular pay? RS: Oh, it was nothing compared to your regular pay, nothing at all. KT: Just a little bit to maybe pay some bills, buy some food? RS: It's maintenance of either transportation, or buying some lunch, or if you prefer not to eat, you know, well, the food was available for that. I never received strike benefit, because economically, I was not, like I said, me and my older sister lived together, so therefore, and at that particular time, I was about to go on maternity leave. So I was little stash here, and a little stash there, and a little stash there. So economically, I didn't, I wasn't better than nobody else, but I was preparing, you know, myself for me being out from work anyway, to a degree. But I was out longer than I had expected, because I didn't go back to work until November 10th of 1969. But there were available funds for all persons who were out on strike, through the national union. Lisa Wu: Would you have done anything different? RS: When we hear about it now, it's so many people who was involved with the hospital strike, and names you've never heard of before, faces you've never seen before, but they're carrying the banner that we were on strike, we were on the picket line, we were on everywhere. And they say, you know, you have to, I just listen, really. WS: Now, see, very rarely you find people that do the heavy lifting, get the reward out of what they're doing. There's so many gains. That strike changed the state of �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 42 South Carolina. Blacks beginning to get jobs that they never would have gotten, all over the state. And what the state leaders done, they would never hire anybody that was a part of even getting in the civil rights movement. So the top black that they hired over at the Medical College was Marion, Judge Marion, who'd never been involved in anything, but he ended up with a real powerful job at the Medical College, but after the strike was over. And we find that that happened all over the state of South Carolina. The Human Affairs Commission got started, and Jim Clyburn, who's now the Majority Whip, ended up being the commissioner for that Human Affairs Commission. So, and you can see how that have catapulted him, had changed right there, right after that strike. I mean, blacks began to get elected to office, statewide office, in the city of Charleston. Herbert Fielding got elected in 1970, right behind that we got three or four other blacks that got elected. And so there's a lot of things that, good stuff that came out of there, and there's a lot of people that got benefits out of that. But the people that did pay the price, none of them got any benefits out of that. And that has caused a lot of bitterness around some people, in terms of, you know, because when you talk about the hospital workers, you talk about letting that not happen, that there's a lot of folk that have enjoyed a good life today because of that strike. And again, none of that has been written up, in terms of the ripple effects of that strike. And things changed at The Citadel, you know? And that's how I ended up being a commencement speaker for the graduate school over there at The Citadel. I mean, they put a better group of people to talk about community relations and race relations, and all of that came out of that strike. There's a lot of, lot of good things that happened. One of the things that Ms. Simmons talks about all the time, and one of the things that came out of that was the respect. Well, I had, and I still got it, my motto is, either you �Mary Moultrie, William Saunders, Rosetta Simmons 43 respect me or you fear me, and I don't give a damn which one you choose, because there's a very thin line between respect and fear. So you respect me or you fear me. But, you know, you've got to know that I'm present. And there was a song that the Temptations made during that strike that I used to play, when I went into radio business that, why do I have to throw a brick before anybody recognize me or know that I'm here? And people still have to do that. Why, why should you have to do something like that, without, before anybody will recognize that you're a human being or that you're there? Lisa Wu: Is there anybody in particular that you feel that should get some recognition from this, that's been forgotten? END OF INTERVIEW Matt Allbritton March 20, 2010 Reviewed by: KG April 14, 2010; SW September 24, 2010; KT June 6, 2011 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kieran Walsh Taylor Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mary Moultrie William Saunders Rosetta Simmons Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2 hours, 28 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Mary Moultrie, William Saunders and Rosetta Simmons, interviewed by Kieran Walsh Taylor, 5 March, 2009 Subject The topic of the resource Hospital Workers' Strike, Charleston, S.C., 1969 African Americans--Civil rights--South Carolina--Charleston Hospitals--Staff--Labor unions--South Carolina--Charleston Women--Employment--South Carolina--Charleston Description An account of the resource For over three months in 1969, four hundred African-American hospital workers from the Medical College of South Carolina and Charleston County Hospital walked off their jobs in protest over discrimination and the right to form a union. The state government and hospital boards argued that workers receiving pay from public funds could not engage in collective bargaining. The hospital strikers were mostly women, some of whom earned below the federal minimum wage; white hospital workers performing the same jobs were paid higher. This interview details the experiences of two women involved in the strike, Mary Moultrie and Rosetta Simmons, and a local civil rights activist who helped organize the strike, William Saunders. Moultrie and Simmons describe the working conditions before the strike and their demand for “respect as human beings.” Saunders remembers the racial tension in the city during the strike, detailing threats made by local officials and the false arrests of activists. All three interviewees report that African Americans at the hospital today are “afraid” to push for better pay and working conditions. Saunders also comments on the fact that “nothing is illegal in South Carolina,” referring to the fact that the state continues to deny public sector workers the right to collectively bargain. The session, which took place at the office of the union representing City workers (Local 1199-Charleston), was part of a Citadel graduate course on local history. Citadel history professor Kerry Taylor guided the initial portion of the conversation and various students followed with their own questions. For additional interviews related to the hospital workers strike, visit the Southern Oral History Program collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston.<br /><br /><h3><strong><a target="_blank" href="http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:23445" rel="noreferrer noopener">Listen to the audio on the Lowcountry Digital Library</a></strong></h3> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-03-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/192 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.)