TRANSCRIPT WILLIAM SAUNDERS. what happened between the time when she got back to the hospital, when she came back from

Transcription

1 Interviewee: William Saunders Interviewer: Otha Jennifer Dixon Interview Date: Monday, June 23, 2008 Location: Charleston, South Carolina Length: Approximately 56 minutes START OF INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT WILLIAM SAUNDERS Otha Jennifer Dixon: We talked a bit about--. Well we touched on the information on the Hospital Strike, the 1969 Hospital Strike. I spoke to Ms. Moultrie, just trying to get a sense of what happened between the time when she got back to the hospital, when she came back from New York, and when the strike actually took place. She said that when she became aware of what was happening in the hospital, people and their working conditions, low wages, and that kind of thing, you were one of the first people she got in contact with to help her to begin organizing things. Can you tell me about what that looked like, that process, and how that conversation went? William Saunders: Like I told you and the professor the other day, Ms. Moultrie and them were looking at stuff as a planned thing. What happened is that these things evolved. What happened is that they fired five nurses for doing the right thing. Then Ms. Moultrie came to me. And so all we were interested in, at that point, was to get them their job back. So, I went to a guy named Reginald Barrett, Sr. who was on the Civil Rights Committee, from here, and he was able to get them reinstated. After he got them reinstated, then I, and some other folks that I was talking with, said that these five nurses had a lot of guts. But most people don t have that kind of guts so they re not going to stand up against this sort of stuff. Why couldn t we come up with an organization to be able to help these people that are not going to stand up? So what we did, we

2 William Saunders 2 invited those five people, along with Ms. Moultrie and them, to a meeting at Mr. Barrett s house and presented our ideas. And we asked them each to bring five other persons with them that they knew from the hospital. So when we started off we had ten or twelve people. Then after they were interested, then we asked them to bring, that ten or twelve to bring--. So they came back with a batch. So we couldn t really meet at Mr. Barrett s house anymore, so we went over to the DPO Hall, the headquarters for the tobacco workers, Isaiah Bennett and them. But that s how we got to organizing. Yeah, we were interested in a hospital workers association. We were not interested in a union. OJD: Okay, forming an association for these people? WS: And we were using as justification that the doctors had an association. The nurses had an association. Why the hell couldn t the workers have an association? But the hospital leadership forced us into a union thing. But that wasn t our idea in the first place. OJD: Originally. Willie Griffin (sat in on interview): So you wanted the association to do the bargaining or sort of the representation? WS: Yes, I mean that people within the hospital would have themselves a committee that would deal with problems that was in the hospital. That s what happened with nurses and everybody else. They had an organization but somebody else did that stuff. They had a committee that handled those things. What I get really pissed off with a lot of times is that everybody only talks about the hospital strike. We were organizing almost two years before that strike came about. When this thing happened it was in I used to put out, well people used to call it then an underground newspaper, from John s Island, that we called the Low Country Newsletter. I don t know if you saw a copy of that in that thing that I showed you when you were here Thursday. OJD: I think I did see something.

3 William Saunders 3 WS: It was a small newsletter. So in our December issue 1967 we had a scale with how the hospital workers were being treated over there. We were going through the studies and talking to people [4:07] tell them that the black hospital workers ate their lunches in the boiler room. Sometimes the nurses would have the keys to the restrooms; they can tell black people when they could go to the restroom, that kind of stuff. So it was a very interesting time. If you are in Charlotte, the person who was the vice-president of that group is in Charlotte, Jack Bradford. OJD: Mm hmm, she gave me his name. WS: He s in Charlotte. Because one of the other things, little sister, that I get irritated about, because Ms. Moultrie and them allowed for a time to be that this was something that black women did. They did it for the uplifting of black women. That s a lie. I mean it was about black people. It had nothing to do with black women, but they twisted it about eight or ten years ago and it became a black woman s movement. WG: A black woman s movement, right. WS: And that sold. It really made people feel good that these black women [5:05]. But most of the people that were doing these custodian and in the kitchen, they were men. WG: You said you talked about being irritated by, I guess, history has only acknowledged the hospital workers side of this movement. What was some of the other areas that you guys tried to focus on outside of the hospital? WS: Well, again, it s not just the hospital workers side of it, but the whole what was happening at that time. There was a guy, a Muslim leader, Otis Robinson who was [5:39] Muslim. He was the guy that really did so much with me and three or four other people. We had a grandiose plan that we were going to have a black super market. In that all of the blacks that were working, just like the hospital, bought the food for themselves it would work. We looked at voter registration and began to [5:58] and influence candidates, and all of that stuff. So, all of that was a part of our organizing. It was not just about trying to make some more money or to do

4 William Saunders 4 that. But the need to be able to become independent, and that was a really big focus for us, you know, getting the right candidates, and all kinds of stuff. But again when the president of the hospital forced it into a union thing, we sent a picture, I don t know if Ms. Moultrie showed you or anything. We sent a flyer to all of the workers in the hospital of a union boss, and diamonds, and bronze, and champagne. OJD: I think she did mention that. WS: That really irritated a lot of black folks [6:42]. They got really irritated about that, and that s when a lot of them came to join up after that, because we had probably about four or five hundred people. When Dr. King got killed we were in the DPO hall organizing that night, when Isaiah Bennett came and said Dr. King was shot. And then a little later he came back and said he died. Otis Robinson took the microphone--well, not a microphone because that is before we had mics--but he told the folk that this is something we need to do for Dr. King. The people have called you on this one thing that the hospital workers are really upset about it and feeling sorry for themselves, because the president of the hospital told them that these were unprofessional workers--non-professional workers--so they re really not that important to the hospital. So these workers were feeling bad about themselves. And Otis told them, Don t let anybody tell you that you are non-professional. I mean, the surgeon comes and operates for twenty minutes but you got the patient for the next twenty-four hours. You clean them, you feed them, you talk to them. You re the one that nurse people back to health. Most of the people who call them non-professionals couldn t do what they do. And then that s how Jesse Jackson took it, that Otis Robinson said, You are somebody, and that any--. But, you know, you are somebody. That whole thing about being somebody came out of that movement. I had a--. I got to tell you, I had this little group of bad fellas, and a couple of women, and we used to take care of business if we had to. And that night after we got out of the hospital, out of that organization, if you go out Spring Street, that whole street there were black hotels. There were motels. There were restaurants. There were businesses. And there were some young

5 William Saunders 5 black fellas that, we still call it Back to Groove, it was a project of mine. I had them, they were a part of what I was doing here, young fellas. And I ran into them cause I wanted them to get off the street that night cause I knew there was going to be some stuff, and the cops were going to be out and stuff. So I rushed down on Spring Street [8:58]. I met them there and I tell them, I want you all to go home, stay off the street tonight. We ll meet tomorrow and take a look on what we gonna do. And one of them young fellas says to me, he stood up and asked me--red, this one guy who was real light skinned called Red, a little fella even shorter than [9:17] called Black, jet black. [9:20] I went to one of the leaders and I asked them, Please get off the street. Yes sir, Mr. Bill. And after I turned around someone threw a brick in a car window coming down the street. [Laughter] I jumped in my car and headed across the bridge and just left that alone. It s funny now but it was really frightening, cause they just told me that they were not going to do anything. [Laughter] I got them to come to John s Island to have a meeting to try to do some stuff. Those guys brought some guys. They pulled up all of the damn mailboxes [10:01] [Laughter]. It was a heck of a time. It was really, really a heck of a time. But we were able to convince the people that were higher up that we were just as bad as they were, and that we were willing to die just as much as they were. That we were not going to stand up and let them do stuff to us. But the hospital workers were the impetus for all of this stuff. OJD: I wanted to know--. You mentioned something about how it was twisted later on to be a woman s movement. How many men were actually involved? Were men getting involved from the hospital--? WS: The workers--. Most of them--. I don t know. Maybe thirty or forty percent of the workers were men. women were? OJD: Were they getting involved in the actual strike? Were they as involved as the

6 William Saunders 6 WS: I don t if as involved. I guess they were. Like I told you the other day, when we went to jail, there were seventeen of us that went to jail. I was the only one in that didn t work for the hospital. All of these men were hospital workers. I can give you somebody now that is still around that worked through that and retired from the hospital. OJD: Oh really? WS: They complained about making it--. And Ms. Moultrie and them, none of them did that until about maybe fifteen, sixteen years later. They decided--. Some white woman was doing an interview with them and then I start hearing Ms. Moultrie saying that black women did all of this damn stuff. And I mean, I immediately--. I quit speaking to most of them for a good while because they were lying. And the kind of stuff that came out that Ms. Moultrie would not talk about [11:43]. The folk that really got all the advantage out of this thing and the stuff was the union and SCLC. They did all this and then they left. I fought--. I had a committee and we fought with the SCLC and the union as this thing was about to come to an end. Take at least the leadership of this group that we got; train them how to run an office, how to run a union, how to do dues, and all of that. They refused to do it. When it was fair they just set up an office for Ms. Moultrie and some of them and they left. OJD: Is that why it didn t survive? WS: That s right. And that til this day I believe that the union and SCLC made a deal with the government of the state of South Carolina. And some of that stuff happened. But that s not gonna be a discussion. It just never happened. OJD: Ms. Moultrie mentioned something earlier about some behind closed doors meetings, and that may be what she is referring to, that she said she wasn t a part of, that she had heard was taking place around the city. Do you know anything about those? Is that what she s talking about? WS: Well I guess she could be talking about that. It wouldn t be so much around the city. It could be in Columbia or wherever that those meetings were going on. Even when the strike

7 William Saunders 7 ended, I think, Ms. Moultrie wasn t here. They had her--. They were taking her over staying in Detroit and everywhere they were organizing, because, God, you talk about a speaker. She could light up a group of people. She was just so good. So they used her a good bit. It could ve really been a good thing. And it still would ve worked if Ms. Moultrie and them were equipped to handle what was going on. But the Human Affairs Commission came out of that. And of course, their setup was in the hospital, dues, like folks could set up a credit union type stuff. But everybody that wanted to pay dues could pay dues through the credit union and pay it to the union. Again Ms. Moultrie and them were not equipped to make that work. And I ve found out all my life that white people do everything to get past the initial danger. And then they got a plan. And their plan is always so much longer than ours. We have two, three-year plan, they got a twenty-year plan. They remind me of ants. They are always working, making something. That s what happened. Ms. Moultrie and them started having celebrations. Two, three months after that they would come with a big celebration. They would have a big celebration, but it was about nothing. And that s how this organization came into being. In 69 it started with just five of us sitting in the car right up there [14:42] used to meet. I used to drink professionally at a time. [Laughter] I was a professional drinker and I had some professional drinking friends. The most intellectual times we would have is under the duress. [Laughter] That s how we planned COBRA. It came into being that there must be a way that we can come up with a way to find problems in the community before it get to the point that it polarize people and cause stuff to happen that happened in the hospital strike. WG: And so COBRA was involved also--you mentioned earlier--involved in promoting people for political office, blacks for political office. Didn t you say that earlier? You talked about--.

8 William Saunders 8 WS: Well that was one of the issues we had for the union. We got involved in that because after COBRA got--. See COBRA didn t start until after the hospital strike. We had all the stuff we needed for it but we didn t start it officially. COBRA was involved in putting together--. We put together a black party in We were part of that. Jim Clyburn, who s now in Congress, he was one of the leaders with us putting together that United Citizens party. Clyburn was on our board, one of the founding members of COBRA s board, and he helped us do that strike. So there were a lot of people involved. OJD: I want to go back for a minute just to get a bit of detail. With the meetings, can you give me a hint of how the meetings went? WS: What meetings? OJD: When you first started organizing, before the strike, when you d all get together in the gentleman s house. WS: Oh, the idea, what would happen in those meetings, we that were not hospital workers--and there was five of us or so progress meetings that were not hospital workers--we would be finding out stuff that was going on in the hospital that we didn t never know that existed. Same thing we re doing now, I don t know if Ms. Moultrie told you, that we re doing with the sanitation workers. We d be finding out so many things that those people had suffered. And now there s so many women working for the sanitation department, and drivers, and they re suffering. A lot of them are catching hell from some of the black males there and the management itself, and of course the supervisors are now black. They are also a part of that demeaning of things. But it was really about getting information and being able to create what we did. We were able to create the kind of leadership out of that hospital workers that they could run an organization. They couldn t run a union because they didn t have the money, but they could do what needed to be done to bring people in, to touch ministers, to touch barbers and beauticians, and all of the people in our community know exactly what s going on.

9 William Saunders 9 OJD: I m trying to understand the timeline. So you all started to organize and come together at the end of 67? WS: About the end of 67. OJD: I think they got fired some time over Christmas, so maybe the beginning of 68. WS: Yeah. OJD: And at what point--? So you all had been organizing for quite some time amongst yourselves before the union came in? WS: Yes. OJD: Now did the union come in--? You mentioned that the hospital forced the union on you all. Did the union come in and then the hospital came in, forcing you in that direction, or did the union come in before the hospital--? WS: No, the hospital didn t force--. But see, we had union support at that point because Isaiah Bennett was the vice president of the tobacco union. As a matter of fact we even when we called them he was the one who made the contact. And of course the 1199 out of New York also was one that Dr. King was involved in, in New York. So the SCLC and 1199, they were already part of this in New York. OJD: So that s how they both ended up here. WS: That s how they both ended up here. OJD: Okay. Now, do you--? Is it your opinion, or how do you feel about--? Did anything change whenever the union, the SCLC, came in? Was there a shift? Did you feel like--? You mentioned that the union took it in a different direction than you all had originally. WS: Yeah, one of the things that happened, and also this had something to do with us, that we were part of putting it together, when the union and the SCLC came in we felt comfortable so we backed out of it and all we did was provide security and stuff. OJD: You mean you, and--? WS: The group that I had.

10 William Saunders 10 OJD: That weren t hospital workers. WS: That were not hospital workers, so we sort of backed out and left it to the professionals that was involved. They had some powerful people. Very few people are smarter than Young. He s just a brilliant guy. And the union people are very, very sharp. But South Carolina is a very, very, very hard state. We tried--. I don t know if Ms. Moultrie talked to you about the meeting [20:03] when we had a meeting up in Moncks Corner where--she told you about that? OJD: Mm mm. WS: Well we took at least ten or so of the hospital workers and part of the trustee board at the Medical University. [20:20] hospital workers. But the union--not the union but the hospital workers--and the people that controlled their lives the trustee board at the hospital to meet and to talk about their grievances and the problems that they have. After that meeting was just--a lot of folks felt pretty comfortable. The trustee board felt different about [20:45]. Ms. Moultrie and them talked about these guys being polite. But none of them had ever had any direct contact with each other up until that point. And when we got back I think Ms. Moultrie had about ten or eleven grievances that they want settled, and they were able to settle about seven or eight of them at that one meeting in Moncks Corner, and about three of them that they didn t settle. One of them was to take back twelve workers that was fired, there was back pay, there was something else that they didn t settle. They were supposed to have another meeting downtown the next week, and Dr. McCord, who was the president of the college, really sort of went against the trustee board and got some of the people, the white nurses and stuff in the hospital, registered nurses, saying that they would walk out if these twelve were hired back. So it ended up in a real stalemate at that point. And we were looking for some settlement of it. And I was at the--. On Marsh Street [22:02] for blacks at the time, and there was a black motel, Brooks Motel, and Brooks Restaurant and all that stuff there. And that evening Dr. Abernathy was waiting for some answers from the governor because they were going to Morris Brown A.M.E. Church and have a

11 William Saunders 11 rally that night. And the governor called for a room at the Brooks Motel and got one of the black leaders who were not a part of our group, but now they wanted me and some of us that was really involved, they wanted us out so they could put a new group of blacks into this thing. And Father Grant -- McNair [22:50] Because we got to be friends. And he sent this guy to call me and tell me to come to the telephone. And the governor said to me, he said, Bill, what I want you to do is I want you to go to Morris Brown Church tonight and tell the people there that we re going to settle this thing tomorrow. We ve got some stuff that we ve got to work through, but we re going to settle it tomorrow. And I said, Governor, let me think about it. Dr. Abernathy was laying up in a car in the parking lot reading his bible, on his back. And I said, Let me think about it, Governor, and I ll call you back. So I went back and I thought about it with a couple of my people, and I couldn t do that. So I went back and I called the governor back--i told them to call him back--i said, Governor, if you will send me a telegram telling me what you are going to do, I will go to the people and read that telegram from you to them. And he said, Well Bill, let me call you back. [Laughter] So he called me back and said, Bill, I can t get the telegram to you tonight but you have the kind of power with the people that if you go and tell them that we re going to settle this tomorrow, I know they will listen to you and we will end it tomorrow. I said, Okay, Governor. And I hung up the phone and I went to Dr. Abernathy who was in the car, and I said, Dr. Abernathy, there ain t a damn thing I can do about this. [Laughter] And I got in my car and I went to Georgetown. [Laughter] I don t like the way you laugh at me. [Laughter] OJD: You tell your story so vividly. I feel like I was there. WS: [24:56] [Laughter] WG: So you went to Georgetown. Did you have family in Georgetown? WS: [25:04] OJD: [25:06] WG: [25:10] this time period, and it seems like in larger cities there was this rise of new black political power as challenging the older guard. You mentioned that there were some blacks

12 William Saunders 12 that wanted you to sort of remove yourself from the picture. Who were the older guard in Charleston, and what groups were they representing? WS: Well they were representing a lot of times the NAACP, but I mean again if you know Herbert Fielding--you must have come across his name--. OJD: I haven t. WS: You haven t? OJD: Mm mm. WS: He was one of the leaders. [25:49] eighty-six years old [25:54] OJD: Here in Charleston? WS: Mm hmm, but they had that older guard that the little brother was talking about, that group, they had a group of four black men that said that they were the only ones that could run in the mayor s office. They had access to the mayor. These guys also told the mayor that this hospital thing was not going to go anywhere because none of them was involved. OJD: Okay. WS: And that s why if you [26:26]being misled so many times by blacks, because they have blacks around them that were not telling the truth, that would go by what they want to hear. And that s what hurt most of the white leaders, because a lot of them want to do the right thing, but they re being told the wrong thing. And so when Governor McNair called and said let s have a meeting with some of the hospital--not the hospital workers--the trustees, and Father Grant and myself, and they came into [26:55] in North Charleston and we met Father Grant and [27:00] wanted to know exactly what was going on, because he said he wasn t getting all the straight information. The other part of this, because [27:09] going to take a look at this stuff, one of the other reasons that the hospital strike went so hard, there was such a hate for Charleston by the legislature. And the governor [27:24] at the University anyway. So they wanted to see something happen, because they ended up getting another medical school out of it after that for the University of South Carolina. They was that political, and Charleston had this elitist attitude

13 William Saunders 13 and Charleston was the headquarters for North Carolina and South Carolina for a long period of time. So any institution we got in Charleston predates the state of South Carolina, the health department, so all of that was in play. And we met with the governor and some of his people at Hawthorne Inn [28:04] room. [28:07] And Father Henry Grant who manipulated a lot a lot of stuff because he was explaining after I got through talking -- He started explaining it a little bit better than I was explaining. He said, Governor, what you need to see is that if y all don t do what needs to be done, this town is going to burn down. [Laughter] And I didn t say nothing. Oh, God. [28:36] because I don t have a degree. Children don t get that because a degree is important. Especially in the black community, more important in the black community, than it is in the white community. We live off of that. We use it, not for money but something in our heads. Father Grant had the white elite--not white, but the black folk from here that got trace of white blood in them--and they would never want to hear from me. Father Grants said, Now Bill, you ve got to talk to these people. And I said, I just not gonna do that. He said, You ve got to talk to them. He said, I ll set it up. I want you to just do it for me. So I went, and Father Grant, after I had some libations and stuff like that, he turned the mic he introduced me and he said, I want y all to know--and y all know--bill don t have a degree. But what I m going to do tonight, I am going to give him three of mine. [Laughter] And so he took the bite out of what everybody was talking about and we had a very good meeting. But he was just a brilliant guy. I got a picture in there I want to show you before you leave of Father Grant. But he was just a--. He was an Episcopal priest. I didn t know then--. That was the first time I know a black that was priests in the Episcopal Church. And he was from [30:08] or something like that, but he was just really a sharp fellow. And he did a lot of making a lot of things change and bringing a lot of people together. I used to do talk shows. I started doing a talk show back in 68 and 69. When we started COBRA they gave us a talk show on the radio. And my Gullah [30:31] If I m going to plan what I m going to say then I can plan the English words [30:39]. [Laughter] So it didn t work out all the time. And the elite black, oh, God, they were so embarrassed with me, and they

14 William Saunders 14 finally wrote me a letter and tell me that, you know, What you re saying makes sense. We agree with what you re saying. But we don t like the way that you re saying it. And if you would just write it and let someone else read it. Of course I wrote them back. I said, Goddam [31:10] [Laughter] And then talking about this thing, this black education, and I call it--. All this stuff that you guys are getting, I call it training. I m educated, and you get an education out here in the world. It ain t a damn thing but school, what constitutes school in other people s minds. But I have been on the board, business board, of the College of Charleston. I serve as president of the broadcaster s association. I m on the board of [31:52] at the University of South Carolina. I spoke at Clemson, been out at Clemson, and I m on the board of visitors at Charleston Southern University. And all of the white big institutions--. At the Citadel I was the commencement speaker for the master s degree program at the Citadel back in the 80s. I ve never been invited to one black college for anything, not one. Whether it s Morris or South Carolina State, I mean I have never been [32:26] at Claflin or Bennett or Allen or any of these historical universities, and it will never happen. It will never happen. WG: You think it s because you don t have a degree? WS: That s the only reason. I ve been in a session and sat with these guys, especially black males, there weren t a lot of sisters so much, but the black males they have these funny handshakes and all this type of stuff to prove that they know something that other people don t know. I used to be a mason for awhile. I got out of that for that reason. That was nothing but shaking hands and parties and stuff, no relationship with black people, no relationship with black people. WG: What was the reason--? What was it like here in Charleston as a mason? For a long time, were they active members? Were they a part of the old guard as well? WS: Yeah, definitely. They were a part of all that. That s when they got to be Shriners, that s a special place that certain folk like me couldn t even go into I mean that was something special. The hospital workers changed most of that. They broke through a lot of that barrier that

15 William Saunders 15 was there because they were able to do things that those people were not even willing to take a chance on. And so maybe--. Another interesting thing that happened during that, so many of their daughters and sons joined us. I mean black light-skinned girls, and they were really able to wear the bush better than any of the blacks with regular nappy hair. So they all started wearing afros and stuff like that. So it really changed that whole--. Charleston was the place where the Brown Society was originated, which originally our color couldn t belong to, like during the Civil War and right after the Civil War we had the Brown Society. The Brown Society still exists. They still got special organization [34:32]. OJD: Is it for light-skinned black people? WS: Mm hmm. OJD: I never heard of that. WS: Never heard about the Brown Society? Never heard of it? WG: I interviewed a lady named--i can t remember. She lived on Mary Street. She was ninety-four years old and she grew up in Charleston so she talked about that connection with Emmanuel Church, and she talked about--. She said she had an Ebony magazine that was from the early 50s, but it had a church with a comb on the front of it and said that if your hair couldn t go through--. WS: If that comb couldn t go through your head--. WG: You couldn t belong to that church. WS: And the Avery Institute, y all couldn t go there. They had a few folk our color but they were really rich, and a lot of times some of them had even been married to a lighter-skinned. I did some studies, because they used to talk about black males being so color conscious, because all of the black males that was really successful had a light-skinned wife, and they used to say that was the reason. So we took a look at it, and that was not the reason, but the light-skinned people in Charleston especially controlled all of the trades, whether you re talking about plumbing or electricity, whatever you re talking about, making shoes, they controlled it all. So

16 William Saunders 16 the light-skinned males very rarely went to college, but their sisters went, and that was the connection, because poor blacks your color didn t have any of those things so they worked their way through college. And so they met light-skinned women at college and they were compatible simply from that setting. WG: Would you say especially after the 60s during the Civil Rights Movement it became more acceptable for a light-skinned woman to be with a darker-skinned man because he was now gaining access to--? WS: Well I think even before then. WG: Okay. WS: Yeah, before then, I mean I m saying that going back in the 30s you ll find that the ones that went to college--. WG: Those are the ones--. WS: That had a light-skinned wife. I. D. Quincy Newman, who I showed you in the pictures, he said, his wife was someone he went to college with, when she was getting off the train that was in Columbia, he was afraid to take her out. [Laughter] He said, she looked so damn white[37:14]. I hated [37:20]. I did some stuff that helped at the Institute to raise that and I had to do some stuff in the black community to go along with that Institute because they didn t have anything to do with that. [36:36] and they had ICS which was the Catholic school that all of these light-skinned--. Even the integrated movement was basically led by light-skinned blacks. They really weren t doing it for the masses of blacks, but they wanted themselves to be able to go to school with whites. That was the real reason. One of the light-skinned ladies in the Brown Society, she was talking about when Dr. King came along and said we re going to do it for everybody. [38:12] Dr. King from 56 to 68, or not much longer before he died, they began--. But they didn t do anything. Then they finally start taking people out of jail. NAACP wouldn t let anybody go to jail unless they had money or set up bail to get them out of jail. Dr. King [38:33] you went to jail [38:35] you couldn t get out. But they didn t understand that I was born

17 William Saunders 17 into that. So there s a lot of history that the young people that are in education need to study. All of these that have been published, so many are off-shoot, most people have done papers just on the strike and this kind of stuff. There s a young lady that did her master s not too long ago on me at the College of Charleston. She started during the hospital strike and then she changed it and did it on me and involved all the tumultuous stuff that we re not talking about. Because it s not--. They re too simplistic in trying to view strictly from the hospital. The questions that you re raising are good questions, and then there s something that you can do this on but you can look farther into it as you go along, because there s a lot of information available. WG: One of the questions that I was really interested in is you talked about the rich culture, the rich heritage, that s here in Charleston, especially with Gullah. What impact did the movement have on the acceptance of Gullah, because until the 1930s and 40s when there was a lot of research on actually connecting the Gullah culture to Africa and West Africa, did you see a change in people as far as how they felt about their culture in Charleston? How did that play out? OJD: Or how was it accepted? WS: That did not happen until probably up in the 70s. The thing that I hated most was Gullah, and although I m on the Gullah-Geechee Commission, been appointed to that. Gullah is a white term that was invented. It had nothing to do with blacks except they did that. So I ve always had a real problem with Gullah. And the thing that is so bad for us [40:42] is that we--. The only time that anything that we ve gotten is acceptable is when white people accept it. If they don t say that it s good then it s not good. And whites are leading that charge and doing what you guys are doing now. And they have always--i don t how you guys are making it--but they have always had so much money so they could do real thorough research. In the 60s I had two or three whites, Mary [41:15]--have you ever read anything Mary [41:17] wrote? Dr. [41:19], she s written a lot of stuff. She stayed on Johns Island with us. But they had a lot of money and spent two or three years doing research, but not only doing research but [41:33] living with people, going to church with people, help drive people to voter registration, help them go to

18 William Saunders 18 the doctor, but they were bold to really get into people s lives. The book that you got right there, Tree of Life, [41:50] a lot of writing in it about me. Father Grant ran into [41:57] did that book. They stayed on Johns Island. They were with Ms. Clark and them at Highlander. And they came to Esau Jenkins. They stayed on Johns Island for a couple of years while they did all of their stuff. But they still have a type thing with that booklet. The first edition of that book that y all would not have seen and they would not show pictures of somebody like me in it. They had all the elderly--. They wanted to read it [42:36]. And they also had all of the stories where our older sisters and brothers, were being lied to. All they would do is talk about the goodness of themselves. They would not talk about how the moonshine industry caused the low-class blacks to come out of that Gullah culture and all of this other stuff that were able to do. But whites feel [42:58] but presenting us in a negative way. And some of the sons and daughters of those folk got real angry. Like that guy, after that book, that guy couldn t come back to Johns Island for two or three years so folks was really angry at them. And then we were able to get them to work with them to do a second edition. And that was in the 70s so you will see a picture of me and some other folk, some people from the island that are doing well and that have been through school and stuff like that. In fact Dr. John Mackie, who was from Johns Island, he was a part of that book. But they had gotten Allen Lomax --have you heard of Allen Lomax? WG: No. WS: [43:39] because Allen Lomax has really done some research and published so much stuff on us. He had the Georgia Sea Island Singers from St. Simons Island, he put that togehter. He and I had a real blow up. Most people that I know [44:02], you would laugh at me being oldtime, [44:06]. Allen and I, we were at Highlander Folk School, and he was talking about the black culture, the Gullah culture, how it evolved, and he didn t get to the point of what was bad and was good. And I was differing with him and he got very angry at me. And he said, I want you to know I ve studied this thing for thirty-five years. And I said, But I ve been living it--. I ve been black for thirty-five. I ve been living it for thirty-five years. And all of this stuff that

19 William Saunders 19 you re talking about that people were unhappy, but we weren t unhappy. We didn t know we were unhappy until yall started telling us how unhappy we were. We were washing off, got a tub in the yard with four or five people washing off in that same water was not a problem. But they did it as a poverty thing when it was a cultural thing. We finally, and I think in 1969 [45:12] started with COBRA we were able to get some money to teach English as a second language [45:18] and some of those other areas would join, because so many of our young people [45:23]. All of the teachers would always [45:29]. So they started taking some of our kids to speech therapists and stuff. There are certain words that they have that I can t say. My tongue will just not wrap around it. It just won t do it. I used to do the radio show and have five people on and I was kneeing each one of them because I couldn t do the [45:48]. But a lot of those things still have not been looked at. And only winners write history. Losers, like me, can t write no history. We are still trying to make it, still trying to save Johns Island because the road that they re trying to build through there that these folk are attacking they have been through a mini-crucifixion. [46:14] the man with the county comes and they lose faith and stuff because we said we would stop them from building this road straight into Johns Island. Because blacks on this island were free longer than before the Civil War was over. They ran away from the slave masters and they built these places on Johns Island, which is the second largest island in the country, especially on the east coast, and so they were free. Nobody went in after them. So that whole culture could be totally torn up by some rich folk building a road to go to a PGA golf tournament in And they want to do it without even talking to us, just come and take the land, put the money in the bank for you and take the land and stuff. But we have ventured away from where you were, you ve got some other questions [47:08]. WG: I need to get out of here anyway because I have a meeting at 3:00 in Georgetown that I m going to have to get to. WS: Okay. Do you want my number and stuff? WG: I can get it from Jennifer.

20 William Saunders 20 WS: Let me give you a card. [Break in recording] OJD: I just wanted to ask you about--. You said that you all were comfortable with the SCLC and the union coming in. Was it because you all lost faith in what they were doing? WS: There was a place that I lost faith. As a matter of fact I asked for a meeting with them to tell them that they really needed to do some more with Ms. Moultrie. They sort of said that they would, but they didn t. But they got [47:56]. And Dr. Abernathy was not really involved but that real division going on in SCLC. After Dr. King died the void was there and Dr. Abernathy was next in line. They sort of took away his power. They just brought him in when they wanted him to go to jail and stuff like that. But Andy and some of the other folk stayed here the whole time. OJD: Mrs. King came down at some point but she wasn t here from the beginning. WS: No. Again, [48:31] that they needed somebody to do a march and stuff like that, but she was not involved. OJD: Okay. WS: [48:41] OJD: I wanted to ask about--. I read something recently that kind of said that Ms. Moultrie had been used, that she had been some sort of pawn; that they put her as the president of the union but she didn t really have any power. WS: Well, I think that if you go back to what I just said to you earlier that would be true. I don t think she was a pawn, I think that is going way beyond. But, they didn t make her capable--. OJD: Of doing--. WS: Of doing nothing. I mean she was elected by the people from Charleston but they didn t make her, we made her before SCLC came. But I think that she got caught up in the moment and the notoriety got to be so overwhelming for her that she--. I m saying to you as a sister that s growing up you need to have some folk around you, some advisors and some folk

21 William Saunders 21 that you respect that will beat your behind if you don t take a look at what s going on, sit you down and say, Maybe you need to do this. OJD: Right, right. WS: She didn t have that kind of thing. She had outgrown most of us because they had her traveling everywhere and telling her how great she was and that damn near killed her. She got to the point one time that she couldn t walk. She went through some stuff. OJD: Yeah, she mentioned that there was some pain that she experienced that she was not at a place to talk about yet. Things that she s been through that she couldn t talk about here. WS: We just started her now, I would say for the last year, just about a year or so, I would make her go back, because she just locked the door [50:35]. OJD: Now what you all are doing now with sanitation workers, how did your work with the hospital strike inform what you re doing now? What did you learn from that experience that is helping you all make better decisions, different decisions, with this group? WS: Well the decisions that I would make during the hospital strike, or hospital workers organization, is the same that I do now. Nothing I do is different. It s just that I want to make sure that we have a better trained group of leaders, and that s the problem we re having right now, because the folk that are smart in this group are fighting each other. We as a people never focus on our enemies; we always focus on each other. And one of the reasons that we do that is because we don t know what we can be. We can t beat our enemies so we re going to go after people that we can beat. That s the biggest problem we ve got now, going on almost a year, and we still have not been able to get a cohesive leadership group out of these folk because every week they re coming and talking about, So and so been talking to the man, and something going on, you know. And I will say, What do they have that they can tell the man? There ain t nothing you re going to hear that s secret, so what are you talking about? But those are the kind of stuff--. Slavery has put us in that bind that we have never gotten beyond. Nobody wants to blame slavery, but if you check the kind of way that they did us, the light-skinned one, the dark-

22 William Saunders 22 skinned one, the short one and make sure that the black woman have more power than the black man, those kind of issues are still real issues. That s how the whole thing came up with naming the women movement that hospital thing, because that s what the white man would like to see work out, that it was a woman s movement. Jack Bradford, who has one arm, the person that I talked about the other day when you were here, doing some bad stuff that we did, him and another guy tried to have a gun fight in DPO Hall. And Jack Bradford who had one arm blocked the gun and the bullet went through the roof. But all they had to do was have a shooting there and then the organization would sue. Because we took both of them out and said, you know, we re going to take you out and let you shoot each other, have a shootout. Of course both of them chickened out on that so we knew exactly what was going on they didn t want to go out and shoot each other outside they wanted to do it in with all these women and men and hospital workers around, so those kind of stuff. [53:38] OJD: Do you think that--? You mentioned earlier that some of the grievances were taken care of and some of them weren t. How different are things now in Charleston, or as far as--? And not just for hospital workers, because this event was designated as a major event, not just locally but nationally. What impact did that strike, and even the tobacco workers strike before that, that history, that legacy of black people standing up for themselves and their rights and working conditions and things of that nature, how did that impact life in Charleston today? WS: Oh, I think that there have been a lot of changes. I think that you re going--. After the hospital strike, about four years later, we had six people on city council. OJD: African Americans? WS: Yeah, African Americans, [54:30]. And that was in 74. Jim Clyburn and about three or four people got elected to the state house [54:41] got elected to the state house in We had three or four [54:49] elected by 74. That s how Ms. Clark got her pension, because of these people that were elected. So the hospital strike itself was the impetus because what it did is that it proved to the white leadership that women can do certain things. That they can disrupt the

23 William Saunders 23 economic structure. Charleston is a tourist town, and if you could imagine Charleston closed down from April to July, just closed down. They swear that they would never allow that to happen again. So the hospital workers made a lot of difference. They didn t get anything out of it. Neither did I. Starting this organization would be something that came out of it, but I never got anything out of anything. But that s the kind of stuff that we do to each other. There s some stuff that I m doing now I really need to get paid for, but if I get paid for it, it s going to be like somebody bought me. Somebody needs to get paid for some stuff that we re doing. OJD: Right. Well, Mr. Saunders, thank you again. Could you, for the record, could you state your name? WS: Mr. William Saunders from Johns Island. OJD: And we re in Charleston, South Carolina. WS: And today is June 23. OJD: Two thousand and eight. END OF INTERVIEW Transcriber: Deborah Mitchum Date: March 9, 2009