Clinton Jencks
| Clinton Jencks | |
|---|---|
Clinton Jencks in Salt of the Earth
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| Born |
March 1, 1918 Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States |
| Died | December 15, 2005 (aged 87) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | labor and social justice activist |
Clinton Jencks (1918-2005) was a lifelong activist in labor and social justice causes, most famous for union organizing among New Mexico's miners, acting in the 1954 film Salt of the Earth (where he portrayed "Frank Barnes", a character based on himself), and enduring years of government prosecution for allegedly falsifying a Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavit.
Jencks was born March 1, 1918, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father was a mail carrier and his mother an active member of the Methodist Church. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1939, then moved to St. Louis, where he became active in the Interfaith Youth Council and met his future wife, Virginia Derr. Jencks served in the Air Force during World War II, and after his honorable discharge he worked at Asarco's Globe Smelter in Denver. Jencks joined the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (called Mine and Mill or Mine-Mill), a radical union of metal miners. Impressed with the Jenckses' commitment and charisma, Mine-Mill sent them to New Mexico in 1946.
The Jencks' years in New Mexico were marked by an upsurge of local Chicano labor activism at the same time that left-wing unions were withstanding employer offensives, anticommunist legislation, and attacks by other unions. Clinton and Virginia Jencks helped consolidate a Chicano leadership of Mine-Mill Local 890 and encouraged miners' wives to participate in union affairs.
In 1950, the same year that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled Mine-Mill for alleged communist domination, New Mexican miners went out on strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Hanover, New Mexico. This strike began over wages, benefits, and safety, but when the company secured a court injunction prohibiting miners from picketing, miners' wives took over the picket lines. What followed was a dramatic confrontation between the union and the company, and an equally dramatic set of confrontations between husbands and wives, who were at odds over women's activism and the threat it posed to men's household authority. Both Clinton and Virginia Jencks supported the women. Local 890 won the strike in 1952 largely because of the women's picket.
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