Note- An audio file recording of Ms. Brown’s remarks can be obtained by request and will be available for download shortly. A video is in production. In Charleston Louise Brown is known as the Mother of the Movement, a veteran of the struggle for civil and human rights in the hold city for over 50 years and is the only one of the 12 leaders still active in the struggle today. Most have passed away. The other survivors are medically frail.
My Name is Louise Brown.
On Monday, Jan. 10 at 4 pm, I need you to help stop the plan to put 23 schools serving 11 thousand students in Charleston County under control of a private organization paid for and controlled by a syndicate of milti millionaires.
The 1969 Hospital Strike
In 1969, after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, I joined 11 other black nurses at MUSC to demand equal pay. We organized a boycott of Charleston Businesses and a strike against the hospital. Suddenly white nurses had to do the dirty work and take the hard, nighttime shifts. The wealthy people who controlled Charleston, descendants of the plantation owners who had enslaved our grandparent's, demanded we return to work. They terminated us. They threatened our families and our friends. In response we planned a great march and demonstration. We would not be moved.
The Governor of South Carolina sent Tanks full of guardsmen armed with loaded fifty caliber machine guns to drive us off the streets and force us back into low paid employment, segregation and poverty. That was how they believe we should live the remainder of our lives.
Their tanks rolled up King Steet. Our march came to a stop. We were standing there, arm in arm singing. Nervous young men with guns in their hands, who had grown up listening to the Beach Boys, waited to be told if they should shoot us. They knew that if they shot us, they would have to shoot the people standing behind us next and then perhaps the people standing behind them.
Whatever they did to us, the old Charleston of segregation and oppression would not surive much longer.
The Governor of SC decided that day, unlike at Orangeburg, that those soldiers should not open fire on us and kill us with bullets we paid for.
Our fight did not end that day. Despite what you are told, the rulers of Charleston did not learn to treat us with respect. Promises were broken. Employment of any kind was impossible to find. I had to leave Charleston. So did others.We suffered for decades. However, we ended the iron grip of white power in the holy city that day.
Whatever racial discrimination survived was never as powerful or as safe as it had been before. It made concessions. It retreated. It became careful. It never surrendered.
Today I have returned from my exile. I have over 40 children, grandchildren and great grand children. They are teachers, professionals, homeowners, investors. They are citizens. They are free. They are equal to any American.
Nothing less that standing in those streets over 50 years ago, facing those machine guns, would have made that possible.
The aristocrats who controlled old Charleston are fading away. They refused to build a Charleston educated enough and free enough to preserve their wealth and power on merit. They have sold their plantations to become subdivisions. Their mansions and their beach houses have become the toys of people who arrived here with money made elsewhere. The banks and businesses they owned have closed or been purchased by others. Had we all been united, together, we could have saved Charleston.
The old city, good and bad, has disappeared.
Charleston has become the plaything of wealthy people from elsewhere. They play at Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler on Kiawah, and their mansions South of Broad with fancy cars, expensive wines and the other things money buys.
They are bored. Our city has become their investment, their playground and their hobby. They have taken over control of our community foundation, the saved treasure of generations. They scheme to plan our future, run our schools, regulate our parks and make sure that their children control our children until the ocean rises to cover Marion Square. They desire to have power no citizen of New York, Chicago or Atlanta would every allow them to gain.
They have already taken much. On Monday they are demanding the school board which has six of their candidates in office give them much, much more. Control of buildings worth over a billion dollars. Annual budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars. Control of hundreds of employees with the power to hire and fire at will without accountability to the taxpayers or elected officials.
In their schools, they will see that our our children learn to obey. Unlike their predecessors, they will not send tanks and guns to risk covering the streets with blood. They will kill freedom in the classroom. Our grandchildren will make their beds, cook their food and tend them when they are sick believing they live to serve the rich. The only change we will see will be what their paid experts and chosen leaders allow. Those who get along will be paid. Those that resist will be exiled.
The long song of Charleston, which has continued for 350 years, which we sung out loud that day in Charleston so long ago will fade away. Tourists will visit the place we used to be.
It is hard to do the right thing for a better future in the South.
Charleston often fails. It is failing now. However, no one else will every do for us what we will not do for ourselves. We must either learn to teach our children and prosper or struggle. Only failure is possible if we do not keep the power of free citizens to choose our leaders and build our communities.
On Monday, surround the School District Offices before their meeting at 4 pm. Bring your signs and your flags. Bring a pot or pan and a wooden spoon to bang on it with. Get loud. Stay loud. When the moment comes, you should sing.
The fight never ends. I have been in it for over 60 years. If you win on Monday, it will continue. If you lose on Monday it will continue as well. They only decision you must make is will you push forward, make a stand or fade away.
As for me, Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.