During the strike, they were viewed as agitators, but they are now revered as heroines who were looking for respect and better pay. Once the women were given back their jobs, they had to focus on taking care of their families and couldn’t sustain the push for change in South Carolina in what is considered an anti-union state.


Discovering Her Passion in College A native of southeastern North Carolina, Dixon- McKnight entered UNC-Chapel Hill planning to be a pediatrician. When she found out her strengths were not in chemistry and biology, she found her calling elsewhere.


SHARING STORIES OF THE VOICELESS


Dixon-McKnight’s research focuses on the Charleston Hospital Workers’ strike. Photo courtesy of the Waring Historical Library, MUSC, Charleston, S.C.


In the American history, African history and African- American history classes that Jennifer Dixon-McKnight took in college, there were voices she did not hear.


Dixon-McKnight, an assistant professor of history and


African American Studies, wants to discover these voices – the ones of Black women, particularly working class Black women – in order to share their stories.


Dixon-McKnight, Winthrop’s 2023 Outstanding Junior Professor, is completing a book, tentatively entitled “We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Campaign,” about the 1969 strike at two Charleston hospitals. The two-


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month movement, which was one of the most significant civil rights campaigns in South Carolina, caught the attention of the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.


Dixon-McKnight grew interested in the strike when she worked as a field researcher while in graduate school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It became the focus of her Ph.D. dissertation. Much of the research she found about the strike talked about the role of the charismatic church leaders and the Hospital and Nursing Home Workers Union, but the workers’ perspective was often absent.


“They were voiceless and faceless,” Dixon- McKnight said. “The workers were lost in the movement.”


She holds four history degrees: a bachelor’s degree in African and Afro-American Studies from UNC; a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in African-American and U.S. history, both from North Carolina Central University; and a Ph.D. in women’s and gender history from UNC.


She credits several teachers along the way who helped give her a good foundation. “I fell in love with the African-American experience and the study of it,” she said.


At N.C. Central, she found several role models in a history department of mostly Black faculty members who excelled in their work and were the epitome of professionals.


Impacting Lives for Generations to Come In her five years at Winthrop, Dixon-McKnight has been active throughout the university. She serves as program director for the African American Studies Minor (AASM). She brought together local civil rights activists to speak during the 2023 Movement(s) in a Dynamic World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Conference plenary session, “Jail, No Bail.” She also spearheaded a successful celebration last spring of the


AAMS program’s 30th anniversary and one of its founders, the late Dorothy Perry Thompson of the Department of English.


“I love that I can focus on teaching here and can build real relationships with students,” Dixon- McKnight said. “I love the sense of community here.”


Her efforts have strengthened the AAMS program and its curriculum offerings. She has taken on the role of advisor for the Association of Ebonites, Winthrop’s oldest African-American student organization, to revive it and recharter it as the official student organization of the AAMS minor.


Dixon-McKnight’s work doesn’t end on the academic side. The Division of Student Affairs presented her its Faculty Student Life Award in spring 2023 for her student-centered work outside of the classroom. Her reaction was gracious: “It is an honor and a privilege to be a part of such an amazing community of educators and learners, and to do work that impacts lives for generations to come.”


Dixon-McKnight was recognized at the May Commencement ceremony by Interim Provost Peter Judge, left, and President Edward Serna as the 2023 Outstanding Junior Professor.


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