SPOTLIGHT ON UNION HISTORY:
How Coretta Scott King Sparked 1199 Organizing
Her inspirational message in 1968 led to unionization in 20 states
 Coretta Scott King in front of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital during 1969 organizing drive. Behind her is Baltimore Bullets NBA basketball star Ray Scott. |
The time was the summer of 1968.
The occasion was a triumphant 1199 membership rally to ratify a contract that brought a $100 minimum wage and other gains to workers who only 10 years earlier earned $32 a week.
Pandemonium reigned. Members cheered. They sang. They wore buttons that said, “We Did It!” Against all odds, New York hospital workers had won a battle no one but they believed could be won.
But when the cheering died down, 1199 founder and President Leon Davis read a message that challenged 1199ers to go even further. The message was from Coretta Scott King, who died Jan. 30 at the age of 78. Mrs. King had been widowed only a few weeks earlier when her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was gunned down while leading a sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tenn.
 Coretta Scott King addressing an audience at 1199 headquarters |
“The $100 minimum is a magnificent achievement. But millions of black women outside New York City work for far less. If you are prepared to go across the country to organize them and health care workers like them, I pledge that I will go with you.”
Several thousand 1199ers stood and cheered their approval. A few months later, 1199 formed a National Organizing Committee with Coretta King as its honorary chairperson.
1199’s national organizing drive’s first stop was Charleston, South Carolina, where, in 1969, it led a 100-day strike of 400 black women at two hospitals. Coretta Scott King was the inspirational heart of that strike. She spoke at churches. She led prayer vigils. She led a 10,000-strong Mother’s Day march with prominent civil rights leaders and Union leaders joining her at its head. Strikers called the merging of those two forces “uniting soul power with Union power.” And, looking ahead, Mrs. King urged that 1199 organizing go beyond Charleston.
"Mrs. King's work on behalf of hospital workers was a major part of her legacy."
- Andrew Young, former UN Ambassador, on the day of her death
In August 1969, she greeted workers outside Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and urged them to vote Union the following day. They did. Soon afterward, she did the same at Hahneman and Temple University Hospitals in Philadelphia and St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan.
The national organizing drive spurred by Mrs. King went on to organize nearly 100,000 workers in 20 states and Puerto Rico. Most of them are today in SEIU locals with 1199 in their names.
Coretta Scott King remained a close friend and ally of 1199 for the rest of her life. She spoke at 1199 conventions and Black History month celebrations. She came to Manhattan’s Lincoln Center to eulogize Leon Davis after his death in 1992.
History will remember her as a courageous and graceful fighter against racism, poverty and violence. And, as former UN Ambassador Andrew Young said on the day of her death, her work on behalf of hospital workers - begun at Manhattan Center nearly 40 years earlier - was a major part of that legacy.
 Charleston - May 1969, before Mother's Day March that she lead, Coretta King met strikers' children at strike headquarters |