Nation: THE CITY: ECHOES OF MEMPHIS

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CHARLESTON, S.C., is a city of antebellum mansions with brass knockers, walled gardens and wrought-iron gates. In spring, the stately peninsula city with its long sense of history is a snug, unharried haven for tourists. Charleston's generally docile Negroes and unpugnacious labor unions have blended well into the Old South texture. But this spring the blacks and the unions have both begun to change, and with them, Charleston.

Disturbing the stagnant peace are more than 350 black hospital employees, most of them women, most of them of limited education and skill, who work as nurse's aides, practical nurses, orderlies, kitchen help, janitors and maids. The majority earn between $1.30 and $1.60 an hour. They are striking two hospitals, making the issues not wages and working conditions, but simply union recognition and the right to collective bargaining.

God-Given Rights. Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital have remained open, but the community is cruelly split over the issue. Volunteers, both black and white, are helping to keep the hospitals going. The city's newspapers have editorialized against the strikers, accusing them of "playing the racism theme" and being "the victims of professional agitators"—an allusion to support from the New York-based Local 1199, Drug and Hospital Employees Union. Almost submerged is the far more relevant question of how to cope with stoppages by public employees in institutions affecting the public welfare. To Dr. William McCord, president of Medical College Complex, which includes the hospital, the answer is simple: "It is our intention to resist this union in its attempt to get in here with every legal means at our disposal. Make no mistake about that." McCord, who was brought up in Africa, where his parents were medical missionaries, prefers to deal with employees on an individual basis.

The strikers are equally adamant. Nurse's Aide Mary Moultrie, the strike leader, who was arrested last week during a demonstration and has remained in jail, promises "demonstrations, confrontations and more activity on the picket lines for as long as it takes." Aside from 1199's help, the workers were pleasantly surprised by support from predominantly white South Carolina labor groups, some of which have been traditionally standoffish toward Negro organizations. White clergymen have been active in a citizens' committee raising funds for the workers. Says Father William Joyce of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church: "We are promoting the humanitarian, God-given right of people to organize for their own protection and betterment."