On strike and on film : Mexican American families and blacklisted filmmakers in Cold War America / Ellen R. Baker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baker, Ellen R.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Empire Zinc Company Strike, Hanover, N.M., 1950-1951.

Strikes and lockouts--Zinc mining--New Mexico.

Strikes and lockouts.

Strikes and lockouts--Zinc mining.

Mexican American labor union members.

New Mexico.

Mexican American labor union members--New Mexico.

Salt of the earth (Motion picture).

Physical Description:

xii, 349 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2007]

Summary:

In 1950, Mexican American miners went on strike for fair working conditions in Hanover, New Mexico. When an injunction prohibited miners from picketing, their wives took over the picket lines-an unprecedented act that disrupted mining families but ultimately ensured the strikers' victory in 1952. In On Strike and on Film, Ellen Baker examines the building of a leftist union that linked class justice to ethnic equality. She shows how women's participation in union activities paved the way for their taking over the picket lines and thereby forcing their husbands, and the union, to face troubling questions about gender equality.

Baker also explores the collaboration between mining families and blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers that resulted in the controversial 1954 film Salt of the Earth. She shows how this worker-artist alliance gave the mining families a unique chance to clarify the meanings of the strike in their own lives and allowed the filmmakers to create a progressive alternative to Hollywood productions. An inspiring story of working-class solidarity, Mexican American dignity, and women's liberation, Salt of the Earth was itself blacklisted by powerful anticommunists, yet the movie has endured as a vital contribution to American cinema.

Contents:

Introduction

Grant County's mining district

Class conflict in the mines, 1930-1950

Competing models of unionism

Political consciousness and community formation

Household relations

The blacklist

A progressive vision of popular culture

Anticommunist assaults

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [317]-337) and index.

ISBN:

0807830836

9780807830833

0807857912

9780807857915

OCLC:

70866892