Jencks, Clinton E., 1918-2005

Labor union organizer and leader.

Clinton Jencks, labor union organizer and leader, was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1918, the son of a postal service employee with a strong labor consciousness. Jencks recalls that, as a young boy, he and his father took food baskets to striking miners who faced eviction from their company homes. Upon graduation from high school, Jencks worked at the John Deere company. Jencks went on to attend the University of Colorado, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics in 1941. During World War II, Jencks served in the Army Air Force and saw action in the Pacific as a navigator of a B-24 squadron. He earned four battle stars, seven air medals, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, Jencks became active with the American Veterans Committee and became president of its Rocky Mountain chapter in Denver, Colorado. Through his work with the AVC, Jencks devoted himself to such veterans' issues as fair housing, employment, and health care and sought to bring an end to racial and ethnic discrimination. It was also during this time that Jencks found work as an acid plant operator in the American Smelting and Refining Globe Smelter at Denver. Here, he became an active member of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 557.

In 1947, the union hired Jencks as their business agent and sent him to Bayard, New Mexico to work with the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 890, a predominately Mexican American union. For some years, Local 890 struggled to overcome such issues as job and wage discrimination and unsafe working conditions at the Empire Zinc Company in Hanover, New Mexico, a subsidiary of the New Jersey Zinc Company. In 1950, Jencks helped Local 890 stage a fifteen-month strike against Empire Zinc. In early 1951, Jencks was elected president of Local 890. Jencks and other strikers were arrested on June 12, 1951 while on strike and on a picket line at the mine's entrance. Jencks was jailed and placed in solitary confinement for sixteen months.

After his release, Jencks met Paul Jarrico, a Hollywood screenwriter who had worked at the Howard Hughes RKO Studio. Jarrico had recently been blacklisted for refusing to reveal his ties to the Communist Party and for not revealing the names of others who were also suspected of being party members. Jarrico was vacationing in San Cristobal, New Mexico and was looking for story ideas for new film projects. Jencks described the events of the Empire Zinc Strike and the plight of Mexican American miners and their families who struggled for their civil rights in a company town to Jarrico. Jarrico found the story appealing, and he contacted Hollywood friends to help him produce the film independently. He also asked Jencks to help write a script based on the Empire Zinc strike. Jencks agreed, and the idea for the pro-labor film emerged. In 1953, the film Salt of the Earth was filmed in the Silver City-Bayard, New Mexico area. It was released for distribution in 1954 amid political controversy and violence. The film was later denounced on the floor of Congress for its Communist influence and was blacklisted by Hollywood and held for worldwide distribution. All of those associated with the making of the film, including Jencks and his family, were accused of helping to make an un-American film promoting Communistic ideas intended for use as a propaganda tool for subversives intending to overthrow the American government.

On April 17, 1953 Jencks was arrested, charged, and indicted with allegedly falsifying his non-Communist Taft-Hartley affidavit. The affidavit, which Jencks had signed on April 28, 1950, was required of all union leaders under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Jencks was accused of having lied when he denied membership in the Communist Party and of having lied when he denied his affiliation with Communism. The International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union rallied to his defense and mounted a massive effort to help Jencks, but to no avail. His chief accuser was Harvey Matusow, a paid FBI informant and a Communist turned undercover agent for the FBI. The so-called Jencks Trial took place in El Paso, Texas in 1954. Matusow stated in the trial that Jencks had ties to the Communist Party, charges that were later proven to be untrue. In his 1955 publication, False Witness, Matusow admitted that he had lied about Jencks. He confessed to the falsification again when Jencks appealed for a new trial. On October 26, 1955 the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans affirmed the guilty verdict against Jencks. In a 1957 landmark decision known as the Jencks Case, the United States Supreme Court ruled Matusow's charges invalid and declared Jencks innocent of all charges tying him to the Communist Party.

In 1964, Jencks obtained his Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. In the same year, he was hired as a Professor of Economics at San Diego State University. He continued to teach for that institution until his retirement. Jencks died on December 14, 2005 in San Diego, California.