"In Charleston they're facing bayonets," flyer from the National Union of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees, Local 1199 Drug & Hospital Union, 1969, courtesy of Tulane University Libraries.

This section features select biographies of key historical figures in the 1969 Hospital Workers Strike in Charleston, South Carolina. These individuals include hospital employees and strike organizers, along with local and national civil rights leaders. Oral history audio excerpts are included to provide insight into the demonstrators’ personal experiences in the strike. These accounts stand as testimonies to the challenges and accomplishments of community-based grassroots organizing, as well as the legacy of the strike and its supporters in Charleston and beyond.

The oral history clips included in this section are also available in their entirety online through The Citadel Oral History Program and the Avery Research Center Oral History Collections in the Lowcountry Digital Library, as well as the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina. Research for these biographies was conducted by students enrolled in Kerry Taylor’s history course, The Civil Rights Movement, at The Citadel in Fall 2013. This section was added to LDHI in 2015.