[ambient music] [traffic humming] - We had to rebuild this history, interview people, and have people give us the actual artifacts.

They are the pioneers in American industry where a woman could make an hourly wage.

They were helping the men fighting in Vietnam.

I don't understand why they're still being left out of American history.

[dramatic music] This story had been hidden, locked away.

- People that live there today do not have any idea of what happened.

- The country needs to honor these people as victims of a war that was not very popular.

- Fairness and justice has not been obtained.

[dramatic music] [gentle music] [gentle music continues] - Thiokol came, trying to get a contract to produce solid rocket boosters for the space program.

It gave some people the chance to get a job that would support 'em.

[gentle music] [explosion blasts] [gentle music] Ultimately, the NASA people decided to go with liquid fuel propellants.

Thiokol was able to get other contracts to stay in business and that's where the contract for the trip flares came in.

- The manufacturers of the trip flares were women.

[upbeat music] - That was really my first paying job, and you know, that was my money.

- I was thrilled to get a job where I just got paid by the hour.

- Better than minimum wage and you got a chance to do eight hours work, five days a week in a good environment.

You had health insurance.

- They had very good benefits and it wasn't that far from home.

It was right here in Camden County.

[upbeat music] - I bought me a car and I bought me a trailer and then I took care of my kids.

- She was enthusiastic about going to her job and it was because she can provide for myself and her.

- I was glad about her working at Thiokol My dad worked at Thiokol too.

- Ms Ethel Banks, she would come in and she was just grinning and happy.

Cheryl Sullivan, she was young and bubbly and full of energy, and Gloria Walker, she always was smiling.

She had a baby and she had just got married, and Celia, she'd come in the morning and she would be singing, clapping.

♪ Jesus on the main line, tell him what you want ♪ ♪ Oh Jesus is on the main line ♪ ♪ Tell him what you want ♪ - They were women, for the first time, entering into skilled labor versus domestic work.

They were laying the groundwork for women that today work in factories.

♪ Tell him what you want ♪ ♪ Oh, the main line [music fades] ♪ [distant traffic humming] [birds chirping] - We've had a ongoing campaign.

We're asking our elected officials, in Congress, to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the people killed at Thiokol.

[upbeat music] - [Speaker] Everybody that worked in that building was working for the Vietnam War.

- [Speaker] We had a bunch of soldiers over there and we was trying to help 'em out.

- They saved thousands of American lives.

I had been a Navy photographer for the whole 10 years I was in the Navy.

I got to see firsthand what a trip flare could do in lighting up a entire battlefield.

- It's hard to see at night sometime over there and the trip flair, it illuminate.

It's good if, say, the Marines coming in to get you.

- The people working there had been told that these trip flares were highly flammable, but they won't explode, you don't have to worry about that.

- One day, I had some on my shoe string and I went in my living room and I stood in front of the heater.

I was on fire, just that quick.

- [Speaker] You can rub your feet on it and get a smoke.

- There a fire, you gotta drop everything and run.

Third time I ran, I didn't go back.

I decided that kind of work was not for me.

So I went to school and became a nurse.

That was my calling.

- We had been out there before to fires and some of the buildings, but the explosion were never expected.

- There was a room where they stored all this stuff, magnesium and sodium nitrate.

Fire went right down the hall and that was when it blew up, and it blew all to hell.

[dramatic music] - [Reporter] 29 died, twice that number burned.

Jacksonville responded to the call for help and sent two rescue units to the scene.

[siren wailing] - This was a response never seen before, in this area.

16 cities, 14 hospitals, the Army, Navy, and the Coast Guard.

[dramatic music] - The first explosion blew me out of there.

And so I hit the ground running.

Whatever way I felt, it was something there and I couldn't get by it.

I'm going to die today.

Lord, I don't want to suffer, make it quick.

And then the wind blows.

[somber music] And when I stood up, as far as I could see was the bodies all out there.

[somber music] - I was in another building when the explosion happened, but it didn't take me but a minute to get down there.

[chuckles] - [Interviewer] What did you do when you got there?

- We had to pick up those people and put out the fire, little fire on the inside the building.

- It flashed across the TV for all personnel from the hospital to come back to work.

- I just remember hearing sirens, helicopters flying over our school.

- I got on the back of one of the fire trucks and went down, not being a fireman at that time.

I just said, "I need to go down there."

- My dad was at Thiokol that day.

That was his place of employment.

He was actually a supervisor.

He was one of the ones out there, stumbling around while trying to save his coworkers and his close friends.

- They stopped pulling off bodies and then they heard somebody groaning and they found me down there.

[somber music] - To see human beings torn up, blown up, outta all I seen in Vietnam, that was horrible.

[somber music] - When it first happened, I went outside and this man came staggering out of the woods.

He was bleeding, he was barely walking, and I ran to him and I helped him over to where there was a vendor that was there visiting us, and I said, "Put him in your car and take him to the first aid, up at the gate."

He said, "I don't want to put him in my car."

I said, "Put him in your car and take him to the gate.

This man needs help."

[dramatic music] - People knew there was a racial divide.

One of the lead people for the Ku Klux Klan, his wife was saved that day at Thiokol, and it was her Black coworkers that saved her in the explosion.

[dramatic music] - [Speaker] A lot of the people that were hurt out there got transported in personal vehicles to area hospitals, like Jacksonville, Brunswick, and the local Gilman Hospital.

- You got a 19 room hospital, but you notice SPR, SPR, these are segregated rooms.

Only six rooms could be occupied by people of color, and most of the women on the line were Black.

- You had a Black ambulance, a White ambulance.

Butler had the Black, Wayne Wright had the White, and they had one body to go to Wayne Wright funeral home that was Black that they thought was Caucasian.

- On that day, segregation died.

No more SPR at the hospital.

No more funeral homes, segregated ambulance service.

- People were coming to the gate to find out if their relatives were okay or what was happening to 'em.

- I heard somebody call my name and it was my cousin, Flossie.

She was covered with dirt and stuff.

She lost her arm.

She has burns on her legs, over her whole body.

Then my cousin, Willie May, she was there, she got killed, but we still couldn't find where Charles was at.

My uncle that worked there said Charles was at the road, safe with him, and thought about Betty, and ran back towards the building.

[somber music] And a beam fell on him, they said when they found him, the beam was still laying across him and he was burnt without recognition.

He was employed seven days before the explosion happened.

He was the big one of the family, you know, and nobody couldn't mess with us 'cause he was our defender.

[somber music] - I was giving an injection to a young lady and when I asked her her name, she got very upset because she told me, "You know who I am."

And I did not recognize her, but soon as she started talking, yes, I knew who she was.

She was a classmate of mine.

- I had never in my life seen anything where the bodies were this devastated.

Some of the containers, they were smoldering, and I remember one container in particular, it was several hundred feet from me, but whatever was in it, it exploded.

- The urgency of the moment was to stop the chemicals from getting into the groundwater.

Everybody worked together to stop a major disaster that day.

- [Speaker] We were thankful to have a bunch of good guys that were willing to take the responsibility and helping other people.

- [Speaker] Jimmy Carter came that night.

He sympathized and looked around and he was our governor at that time.

They asked me to go into the building where they were bringing all the deceased and so I stayed in there until 12:00 that night.

- Well, I worked almost 16 hours that day and got home and couldn't go to sleep.

- [Speaker] Everybody that could help, did help.

[gentle music] - [Speaker] This is the return to work order.

It's dated March 5th.

They told the people, if you don't come back to work, you will be fired according to the union book.

- A week later, they called me and asked me, "Did I want to come back?"

- [Interviewer] One week later?

- Yes, they wanted to know did I wanna come back and help clean up.

- As soon as I got the go ahead, I went back.

Some of the ladies said they couldn't go back because they had nightmares.

- I loved what I did and so I was willing to come back.

Most of the employees did come back.

- [Interviewer] Were you surprised that so many people went back to work after the explosion?

- Yes, I really was.

Me, you couldn't have dragged me out there, not after that, mm mm.

- Case something like this happened again, they would have everything in place.

Before that happened, they didn't think it could happen.

- The Camden County Daycare Center, that was one of the the things that happened, you know, because of the explosion.

- [Speaker] The children had been orphaned and they opened that daycare center to care for those children.

And that daycare center is still open today.

- [Interviewer] Do you remember working with each of these folks?

- Every one of 'em.

[somber music] Any place you work, housekeeping is the major thing and the best thing ever happened to a working man is OSHA.

- We had pallets and pallets of bullets that were rejected, just sitting there.

OSHA was not active.

They would've shut us down because of some of the negligent things that were there.

- I really didn't know the danger that my wife was in.

We couldn't sue Thiokol because every employee that worked at Thiokol was insured.

- [Speaker] It was a workman's comp, so you couldn't blame the plants.

- The persons who were killed or injured were welfare recipients and Black women who were poor women, in some corner of Georgia.

- You had people going and attacking people at their homes and you better not sue them or something bad's going to happen to you.

[somber music] - [Interviewer] Were there new safety measures or any new work conditions after the explosion?

- Well, pretty much, no.

I don't remember them being any.

[somber music] - After the explosion and everybody was buried, these workers began asking why, and they filed a civil suit, Flossie Marie Massey versus Thiokol Chemical Corporation in the United States of America.

- The plaintiffs wanted to show the Army's obligation was to set the standard for safety.

The government's position was, "That is not our obligation.

You, Thiokol, were the employer and you had the obligation to keep your employees safe."

The way it was functioning had been classified by the Army as a class two fire hazard.

Should have been a class seven, which is an explosion hazard.

- [Speaker] A note was found in some government employee's desk drawer that said that they were supposed to notify us, but they didn't.

- That was not just a piece of paper, that would've really stopped the show.

[dramatic music] [upbeat violin music] [fire rumbling] [explosion blasts] - [Radio Communication] 15 seconds, velocity, 2,900 feet per second, altitude nine nautical miles, down range distance, seven nautical miles.

- We'll hear from witnesses from Morton Thiokol, the designer, manufacturer of the solid rocket booster motor joint.

- Indeed, the accident and loss of the crew have been particularly painful for each of us, since, in the final analysis, it was our solid rocket motor that failed.

- The United States government was fighting these workers for 17 years.

Somebody in the government knew the truth those 17 years!

- 1987, the litigation was over, and the plaintiffs had won.

The judge appointed a person to fix the damages for these injured and dead people, very much like what you saw 9/11.

- They would ask questions like, if your mother would've been alive, what do you think she would've been doing?

Would she have three or more kids?

- If you assume that the person was totally and permanently disabled and they were making $1.65 an hour, and you multiply that out, and then reduce it to present value, it's not going to be a whole lot of money.

- They did everything they could to minimize the worth of the people that were killed that day.

- When you going against the government, and we was working for the government, you gotta get what we can get it.

[somber music] - There were some folk who did not get anything.

This is the American way.

Our government cared less about the humanity of the people.

[somber music] - This is the Thiokol Memorial National Monument.

They supplied Vietnam.

Now, the purpose of the Vietnam Memorial in DC is to heal, so we need to take the time and heal our people.

- We have a lot of people that's a part of Thiokol who the relatives died that don't want to remember this because of embarrassment or they're just hurt.

- [Interviewer] What gave you the strength to be able to talk about it without breaking down?

- When I was talking in my church, with God help, he helped me to get over it.

- The more I got involved, the more I realized that these people need to be remembered.

- The first day I saw Janice stand up in that church and announce that she wanted to start a memorial project.

that was a relief to me, and I know a lot of other people.

[upbeat music] - [Interviewer] What do you think about your daughter's accomplishments?

- Very proud of her.

The Lord told her to do it.

- They made a contribution to the nation and to humanity, and we would like them recognized by Congress with the Congressional Gold medal.

And it would be a gift to the children to know how to live through the difficult moments.

- [Speaker] These are the men and women that worked at Thiokol.

- For those of us who were part of the Vietnam War experience, we salute you guys.

[audience applauds] [music fading] [gentle guitar music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] Support for "Reel South" is provided by the ETV Endowment and the National Endowment for the Arts.