“I Hate to Be Calling Her a Wife Now”: Women and Men in the Salt of the Earth Strike, 1950–1952

Word spread fast. On the afternoon of June 12, 1951, sheriff’s deputies came to the union hall with an injunction issued by New Mexico’s Sixth District Court: officers, agents, and members of Mine-Mill Local 890 had to stop picketing the Empire Zinc Company or face immediate arrest.1 This court order, coming just a day after a fight between striking miners and sheriff’s deputies at Empire Zinc, electrified the mining district in this southwestern corner of New Mexico. Phones rang, cars threaded their way to the picket, and women hurried to tell their neighbors. Men starting their shift in other mines told workers who were just leaving. That night, crowding into the biggest dance hall that could be found, hundreds of union members and supporters confronted their dilemma: if the union obeyed the injunction, replacement workers could enter the mine and the ten-month-long strike would be lost; if it disobeyed, all of the picketers could be arrested—and the strike would be lost.