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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAR 19–25  
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_ Hospital Workers Win (in 1969), Virginia Racists Split Hairs
(1924), Anti-Racist Education Rules (1969), Protesters Beat the Rap
(1969), German Troops in Rome (1944), The Fork Not Taken (1989), An
Unemployed Army (1894), Transatlantic Slave Trade _

, Courtesy Avery Research Center for African American History and
Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.

 

_CHARLESTON HOSPITAL WORKERS STAND UP (1969)_

55 YEARS AGO, on March 19, 1969, in Charleston, South Carolina, more
than 400 hospital workers, members of a brand-new local of 1199B, went
on strike. The immediate reason for the strike was the firing of 12
local union leaders for "insubordination." In addition to their
leaders' reinstatement, the strikers demanded union recognition and
the creation of an agreed-upon grievance procedure.  After 14 weeks
of a strike that was met with heavy repression, they won a grievance
procedure that mandated the union's participation without actual
recognition and a modest pay increase. 

The strikers were almost all African-American women employed as
laundry workers, kitchen helpers, nurse's aides, licensed practical
nurses, maid and orderlies The strike pitted the workers -- who had
the support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, NAACP,
and CORE, as well as the AFL-CIO -- against South Carolina's white
power structure. Before the strike ended, at least two mass marches,
one of which had 10,000 participants, took place. The governor of
South Carolina declared a state of emergency, ordered more than 1000
state troopers and bayonet-wielding National Guardsmen to Charleston,
and imposed a 9 pm to 5 am curfew. Hundreds of strikers and their
supporters were arrested on the picket line. 

Despite the effort to break the strike, it was settled on June 27 when
management agreed to rehire the fired workers and to establish a
grievance procedure that would mandate the participation of union
representatives, just a step short of recognizing the union.
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_VIRGINIA RACISTS SPLIT HAIRS (1924)_

100 YEARS AGO, on March 20, 1924, pseudo-scientific racists were
flexing their bigoted muscles in Virginia when the state enacted its
"Law to Preserve Racial Integrity." Many white Virginians took racism
very seriously, making all manner of activities legal for whites, but
illegal for everyone else. But under the pressure of the twentieth
century, the Virginia government felt the need to tighten up its
definition of "white." Hence the Law to Preserve Racial Integrity,
under which  "a white person is one with no trace of the blood of
another race" with one exception that was important to many
individuals of high standing in Virginia society, who claimed to be
descendants of John Rolfe, one of Virginia's founding fathers, and his
wife, the Powhatan princess  Pocahontes. For the sake of such people,
the law allowed that " a person with one-sixteenth of the American
Indian, if there is no other race mixture, may be classed as white."
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_A BIG WIN FOR ANTI-RACIST EDUCATION (1969)_

55 YEARS AGO, on March 21, 1969, the longest student strike in U.S.
history ended with the establishment of the  first -- and only —
College of Ethnic Studies on a U.S. campus. Five months earlier, after
three years of frustrated efforts to get a Black Studies curriculum
approved, the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College had
launched a strike that was quickly joined by Latinx and Asian student
organizations under the banner of the Third World Liberation Front
(TWLF). The 15 strike demands called for relevant curriculum and
greater access for students of color at what was then an
overwhelmingly white campus.  

Police occupied the campus for weeks on end. Thousands of white
students joined with TWLF in daily battles with the cops; the  campus
AFT chapter, representing about one-third of the faculty, went on
strike as well. Before it was over, 700 had been arrested, many more
were injured, and 27 striking faculty (including Nathan Hare, who
developed the Black Studies curriculum) would lose their jobs. But the
S.F. State strike’s impact was felt across the country, and
continues to  influence today’s battles for educational access and
anti-racist curriculum.
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_ANTI-WAR PROTESTERS BEAT THE RAP (1969)_

55 YEARS AGO, on March 22, 1969, nine militant  opponents of the US
war against Vietnam, including three priests, a  former nun, and a
seminary student broke into the downtown Washington, DC, office of Dow
chemical and trashed the place to protest Dow's sales of napalm and
other supplies to use against Vietnamese freedom fighters. The group,
which came to be known as the DC-9, was arrested almost immediately
and charged with illegal entry and malicious destruction of property.
Two of the protesters pleaded no-contest, but the remaining seven told
the judge they would represent themselves at their trial, which took
place in February 1970. The judge, who was determined to prevent the
defendants from putting the war against Vietnam on trial, would not
allow them to defend themselves. Since all the defendants had been
caught in the act, the trial was over almost as soon as it began.
 But the protesters appealed, arguing that the trial judge should
have allowed them to defend themselves, and the appeals court agreed,
declaring them to be not guilty and not subject to being retried.
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_A VERY BAD DAY FOR GERMAN TROOPS IN ROME (1944) _

80 YEARS AGO, on March 23, 1944, a small group of anti-fascist Italian
partisans made a devastating raid on some 150 German occupation troops
in a Rome street, Via Rasella, killing 33 of the Nazis and wounding
more than a hundred while escaping unscathed themselves. Not
unexpectedly, the Germans retaliated the next day by murdering more
than 300 prisoners in cold blood, but the successful attack by the
partisans put an end to the fascists' confidence they could use Rome
as a safe and relaxing haven from the war in the south. In the words
of one Nazi commander, "the morale of our troops was directly
affected, since they could not be safely sent to Rome anymore for
short periods of rest." Ten weeks later, the Germans were forced to
abandon Rome by the advancing allies.
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_THE FORK NOT TAKEN (1989)_

35 YEARS AGO, on March 24, 1989, the head of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency took the unprecedented step of paying heed to
environmentalists' protests and used his authority under the Clean
Water Act to order the  review of a proposal for a major dam project.
When William Reilly announced the review, he said that the planned Two
Forks Dam in the South Platte River's pristine Cheesman Canyon, 35
miles south of Denver, could result in "the very heavy, final and
irremediable loss of an environmental treasure of national
significance." That was the finding of the review when it was
completed a year  later, and the project was killed, once and for
all.
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_AN ARMY OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS (1894)_

130 YEARS AGO, on March 25, 1894, the U.S. was deep in the second year
of one of its worst and most severe economic depressions ever.
Millions of workers were unemployed at a time when their only access
to food and shelter came from charity or personal savings. 

One response to the crisis was organized by Jacob Coxey, an Ohio
political activist and People's Party member. Coxey proposed a mass
march on Washington, D.C., something that had never before been
attempted. He proposed that tens of thousands of unemployed workers
walk to the Capital to demand that Congress fund a national
road-building program that would not only provide much needed
employment, but also produce a national network of modern roads.
Coxey, who lived in northeast Ohio, proposed to lead one contingent of
the so-called "Coxey's Army" from his hometown on March 25. Hundreds
of similar bands of marchers started walking whenever necessary in
order to reach Washington by April 30. The plan was to assemble
outside the Capitol and petition Congress to fund a road-building
program. Some six thousand men had arrived in Washington by April 30.
On May 1 Coxey led a small group to deliver a petition to Congress,
but before he reached the Capitol steps he was arrested for walking on
the lawn. Congress never received his petition.  

Despite Coxey's lack of success, his effort was praised by many
progressives, including Eugene Debs, who was then leading the
hard-fought American Railway Union's strike against the Pullman
Company. Shortly after Coxey's arrest, Debs wrote that "the calling
together from all parts of the continent of a horde of men forced into
idleness by no fault of their own, ragged, hungry, and homeless,
seeking work or subsistence, levying contributions as they march,
everywhere creating unrest and alarm, is a spectacle which no prudent
citizen can contemplate with composure. It is a symptom of a national
disease ceaselessly boding evil. It is organized poverty, an army of
hungry, ragged men, always on the verge of despair, inviting recruits
from the ranks of the wretched and forlorn wherever they are found."
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_NEVER FORGET THE VICTIMS OF THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE _

MARCH 25 is the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of
Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, an important occasion to
honor those who suffered and died as a consequence of the
transatlantic slave trade, the worst violation of human rights in
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* US History
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* Hospital Workers
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* Anti-Vietnam War movement
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* Black Studies
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* Clean Water Act
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* unemployment
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* TransAtlantic Slave Trade
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