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Empire Zinc Strike
The Empire Zinc strike, also known as the Salt of the Earth strike, was a 15-month-long miners' strike in Grant County, New Mexico against the Empire Zinc Company for its discriminatory pay. The strike drew national attention, and after it was settled in 1952, a movie entitled '' Salt of the Earth'' (1954) was released that offered a fictionalized version of events. Background The Empire Zinc Company, a subsidiary of New Jersey Zinc Company, owned and operated a zinc mine located near Hanover, New Mexico, approximately 13 miles east of Silver City, New Mexico. In 1950, Empire Zinc employed 128 people in Hanover, of which 92 were members of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW), Local 890, 12 Anglos and 80 Hispanics. Empire Zinc participated in, and exploited, the discrimination and racism toward Hispanics in southern New Mexico. Underground workers were Hispanics, while a large majority of hourly workers on the surface (mill and repair shop workers) ...
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Strike Action
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to Labor (economics), work. A strike usually takes place in response to grievance (labour), employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when Labour economics, mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Occasionally, strikes destabilize ...
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Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or p ...
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Michael Wilson (writer)
Michael Wilson (July 1, 1914 – April 9, 1978) was an American screenwriter. Life and career Early life Wilson was born and raised Roman Catholic in McAlester, Oklahoma. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1936 and did post-graduate fellowship work between 1937 and 1939. He taught English and began his writing career with short stories for magazines. Then, starting in 1941, he wrote or co-wrote 22 screenplays. Early Screenplays Wilson was credited on '' The Men in Her Life '' (1941) with Loretta Young. He did some William Boyd westerns, ''Border Patrol'' (1943), ''Colt Comrades'' (1943), ''Bar 20'' (1943), and ''Forty Thieves'' (1944). Wilson's career in Hollywood was interrupted by service with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. Return from World War Two In 1945 he became a contract writer with Liberty Films, working (uncredited) on such pictures as ''It's a Wonderful Life'' (1946). He was a co-winner of the Academy A ...
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Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying employment to entertainment industry professionals believed to be or to have been Communists or sympathizers. Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios. This was usually done on the basis of their membership in, alleged membership in, or sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional investigations into the party's activities. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit or easily verifiable, as it was the result of numerous individual decisions by the studios and was not the result of official legal action. Never ...
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Herbert Biberman
Herbert J. Biberman (March 4, 1900 – June 30, 1971) was an American screenwriter and film director. He was one of the Hollywood Ten and directed ''Salt of the Earth (1954 film), Salt of the Earth'' (1954), a film barely released in the United States, about a zinc miners' strike in Grant County, New Mexico. His membership in the Directors Guild of America was posthumously restored in 1997; he had been expelled in 1950. Biberman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Eva Biberman and was the brother of American artist, Edward Biberman. Biberman's pre-blacklist career included writing such films as ''King of Chinatown'' (1939), ''When Tomorrow Comes (film), When Tomorrow Comes'' (1939), ''Action in Arabia'' (1944), ''The Master Race (film), The Master Race'' (1944), which he also directed, and ''New Orleans (1947 film), New Orleans'' (1947), as well as directing such films as ''One Way Ticket (1935 film), One Way Ticket'' (1935) and ''Meet Nero Wolfe'' (1936). He mar ...
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Rosaura Revueltas
Rosaura Revueltas Sánchez (August 6, 1910 – April 30, 1996) was a Mexican actress of screen and stage, and a dancer, author and teacher. Early life Rosaura Revueltas was born in Lerdo, Durango, Mexico to the famously artistic Revueltas family and had three brothers who all were artists: Silvestre Revueltas who was a composer, Jose Revueltas a writer and Fermín Revueltas a painter. Like her brothers, she chose a profession in the arts. She studied acting and ballet in Mexico City and had a successful film career in Mexico before she worked on her trademark film '' Salt of the Earth'' in the United States. For the period that Revueltas was actively working in film, her career was primarily based on creating progressive representations of women. Before she worked on the 1954 film ''Salt of the Earth'', Revueltas worked on the 1951 '' Muchachas de Uniforme'', the Mexican remake of the 1931 German film ''Mädchen in Uniform''. The film was one of the first visual documentations o ...
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Will Geer
Will Geer (born William Aughe Ghere; March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor, musician, and social activist, who was active in labor organizing and other movements in New York and Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. In California he befriended rising singer Woody Guthrie. They both lived in New York for a time in the 1940s. He was blacklisted in the 1950s by Hollywood after refusing, in testimony before Congress, to name persons who had joined the Communist Party. In his later years, he was well known for his role as the grandfather figure Zebulon Walton in the TV series ''The Waltons'' until his death. Early life Geer was born in Frankfort, Indiana, the son of Katherine (née Aughe), a teacher, and Roy Aaron Ghere, a postal worker. His father left the family when he was 11 years old. He was deeply influenced by his grandfather, who taught him the botanical names of the plants in his native state. Geer started out to become a botanist, studying the subje ...
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United Steelworkers
The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, commonly known as the United Steelworkers (USW), is a general trade union with members across North America. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, the United Steelworkers represents workers in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. The United Steelworkers represent workers in a diverse range of industries, including primary and fabricated metals, paper, chemicals, glass, rubber, heavy-duty conveyor belting, tires, transportation, utilities, container industries, pharmaceuticals, call centers and health care. The United Steelworkers is currently affiliated with the AFL–CIO in the United States and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in Canada as well as several international union federations. On July 2, 2008, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement to merge with the United Kingdom and Ireland–based union Unite to form a new global union entity ...
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Taft–Hartley Act
The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. It was enacted by the 80th United States Congress over the veto of President Harry S. Truman, becoming law on June 23, 1947. Taft–Hartley was introduced in the aftermath of a major strike wave in 1945 and 1946. Though it was enacted by the Republican-controlled 80th Congress, the law received significant support from congressional Democrats, many of whom joined with their Republican colleagues in voting to override Truman's veto. The act continued to generate opposition after Truman left office, but it remains in effect. The Taft–Hartley Act amended the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), prohibiting unions from engaging in several unfair labor practices. Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary ...
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Kennecott Mining Company
Kennecott Utah Copper LLC (KUC), a division of Rio Tinto Group, is a mining, smelting, and refining company. Its corporate headquarters are located in South Jordan, Utah. Kennecott operates the Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world in Bingham Canyon, Salt Lake County, Utah. The company was first formed in 1898 as the Boston Consolidated Mining Company. The current corporation was formed in 1989. The mine and associated smelter produce 1% of the world's copper. History Utah Copper Company had its start when Enos Andrew Wall realized the potential of copper deposits in Bingham Canyon, southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in 1887. He acquired claims to the land and started underground mining. In the mid-1890s, metallurgist Daniel C. Jackling and mining engineer Robert C. Gemmell inspected the property and liked the prospects. Both men examined Wall's properties and recommended open-pit mining. In 1898, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir formed the Bo ...
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Asarco
Asarco LLC (American Smelting and Refining Company) is a mining, smelting, and refining company based in Tucson, Arizona, which mines and processes primarily copper. The company has been a subsidiary of Grupo México since 1999. Its three largest open-pit mines are the Mission, Silver Bell and Ray mines in Arizona. Its mines produce of copper a year. Asarco conducts solvent extraction and electrowinning at the Ray and Silver Bell mines in Pima County, Arizona, and Pinal County, Arizona, and operates a smelter in Hayden, Arizona. Asarco's smelting plant in El Paso, Texas, was suspended in 1999 and then demolished on April 13, 2013. Before closing, the plant produced of anodes each year. Refining at the mines as well as at a copper refinery in Amarillo, Texas, produce of refined copper each year. Asarco's hourly workers are primarily represented by the United Steelworkers. Asarco has 20 superfund sites across the United States, and it is subject to considerable litigation ...
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House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having either fascist or communist ties. It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1945, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. The committee's anti-communist investigations are often associated with McCarthyism, although Joseph McCarthy himself (as a U.S. Senator) had no direct involvement with the House committee. McCarthy was the chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, not the House. ...
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