‘I Am Somebody’: A Landmark Documentary’s Enduring Lesson That Labor Rights Are Civil Rights
In the spring of 1969, Coretta Scott King stood in front of a packed church in Charleston, S.C., to address a group of striking hospital workers. She wore a simple white dress and layered strands of necklaces, her pressed, shoulder-length hair nestled under a blue cap with 1199 written in large, white lettering.
She called their strike against the Medical College Hospital (MCH) and Charleston County Hospital (CCH) a “crusade of freedom and dignity.” She lambasted the practice of “full-time jobs for part-time pay.” She told the audience, comprised of mostly black women fighting for recognition of their union, that she considered the black woman “perhaps the most discriminated against of all the working women.”
“If my husband were here today, he would be here with you tonight,” King said, receiving thunderous, approving applause in response.
The scene is part of Madeline Anderson’s pioneering civil rights documentary, I Am Somebody, which chronicles a massive strike in which a group of 400 hospital workers—all but 12 of whom were black women–took on the establishment of Charleston, S.C., to fight for fair, livable wages and worker dignity. Covering one of the final marches of the civil rights movement, I Am Somebody was recently selected to become part of the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
The film’s inclusion is reflective of its historic significance: not only is Anderson a trailblazing filmmaker (she was the first black woman to produce and direct a CONTINUE READING: ‘I Am Somebody’: Landmark Documentary on 1969 Hospital Workers Strike's Enduring Lesson that Labor Rights are Civil Rights
