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June 13, 2001

   
N.M. Labor Leader's Travails the Stuff of Movies
   
By Scott Sandlin
Journal Staff Writer
    When Clinton Jencks came to Grant County in 1949 as the representative of the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, his task was to help local unions.
    Some 52 years later, he is a sort of icon of labor history and one whose personal legacy includes an important decision in criminal law.
    As local attorney Bill Dixon said in introducing Jencks to an audience in December, with his new post in southwestern New Mexico, Jencks "embarked on a course that would change his life forever."
    The union, progressive for its time in opposing racial and ethnic discrimination in pay scales, job assignments or promotions, struck Empire Zinc Co. in 1950, and the consolidated locals in the Silver City area joined in despite violence and intimidation focused on Jencks.
    When a local injunction barred men from picketing, women took up the gauntlet. The miners persevered. And won.
    Meanwhile, leftist filmmakers, actors and writers blacklisted from Hollywood producer Paul Jarrico and actor Will Geer among them were filming "Salt of the Earth" about the strike.
    Jencks and the miners played themselves. Hollywood mogul Howard Hughes choreographed the suppression of the movie.
    Animus toward Jencks was unabated.
    Post-movie, Jencks, who had been required to sign an affidavit as a labor leader declaring he was not a Communist, was federally prosecuted for perjury using false testimony by an aide to the red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Although the informer himself turned out to be a perjurer, detailing his lies to Congress and the FBI in a book, the damage had been done. Jencks was convicted.
    His case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the conviction. Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority, said prior inconsistencies by government witnesses had to be provided to the defense.
    But Jencks proved too controversial still.
    As Dixon told the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which gave Jencks its Lifetime Achievement Award, "the furies of the blacklist had been set loose and dogged him wherever he went."
    Unable to find work, Jencks went back to school, earning a doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. San Diego State University hired him to teach, and he stayed until retiring in 1988.
    Now a professor emeritus who describes himself as "83 years young, still alive and interested," Jencks lives in San Diego.
    Resurgent interest in the "Salt of the Earth" strike keeps him busy with speaking engagements and interviews, including one for a forthcoming documentary on McCarthyism and its effect on two unions.
    Jencks also works on the archives of the Western Federation of Miners and Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, which he was instrumental in getting donated to San Diego State.
    He confesses that in the darkest hours of the blacklisting, he could never have envisioned the renewed interest in the strike and its aftermath.
    "I had a conviction that it was important and valuable at that period of time. But it looked like a voice crying in the wilderness," Jencks said. "It's really rewarding that some people are looking back and saying that it was (an) important work and we shouldn't forget some of the lessons we learned there."