Clint Jencks is in the hospital and very ill. That name may mean a lot to some, nothing to others. How about
Salt of the Earth? Same thing, no doubt.
The movie Salt of the Earth tells the story of an attempt to organize workers in the mines of New Mexico. Clint Jencks played himself in the film - an Anglo union organizer.
To some, especially in the labor movement, Salt of the Earth is one of the greatest films ever made about labor struggle. Not a lot of competition there, of course.
To those looking to recover Latino history or Southwest history, it has gained new importance in recent years. In its day it was controversial because of its unabashed Marxist viewpoint. Today its ideas and language are so radical they can seem alien, not possibly part of the American landscape. Yet they are, were.
The making of
Salt of the Earth was controversial in the extreme as was every stage of its production. As described in
The Movie Hollywood Could Not Stop:
"It's Time To Choose Sides," read a headline in the Silver City Daily Press. Late one night in early March, someone fired shots into Clint Jencks' parked car. The next day two carloads of troublemakers broke up the filming in front of the union hall. Jencks emerged from the fracas with a black eye, and the violent crowd nearly destroyed the camera. That night the vigilantes selected 10 emissaries to relay an ultimatum to the movie people: If they did not leave by noon the next day they would leave in black boxes. The sheriff was forced to call in the state police, who kept the peace as the crew finished the final scenes. Several weeks later someone burned the home of one of the film's Anglo miners.
The film was still far from completed. Now the laborious job of post-production -- the assembly and polishing of the film -- began, and the movie industry made the process more difficult by throwing up as many roadblocks as it could. As Howard Hughes explained in a letter to Congressman Donald Jackson, the studios could effectively kill the picture if they denied the production access to the facilities they needed -- to edit, dub, score, and otherwise prepare the movie for theaters.
After the film, Clint Jencks went on to study economics at UC Berkeley and then the London School of Economics, where he learned his PhD in economics. He then taught for many years in the California university system. For some background on the events at Mine-Mill look here.
And for an overview of the film, look here.
And remember Clint Jencks and his role in our history with wishes for strength for him, his family and loved ones, and his wider community.