Praise for Salt of the Earth

Positive comments for Salt of the Earth are likely as numerous as pine needles in a great big cluster of Ponderosa Yellow Pines.  But here are two of several that came today:

One is from Jyri Kokkonen [Helsinki], a frequent contributor to our discussion lists and well known in our setting.

The other is from a very old friend, Jim Loewen, a sociologist and now retired professor.  He's presently raising funds for an endowed civil rights chair for Tougaloo College. I first met him in 1963 when he spent a week or so at Tougaloo as a Northern student visitor. Some years later he returned to teach for several years at the college. He's the author of some quite good books including the debunking Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995) -- and a quite good history, Mississippi: Conflict and Change (1974).  That one much disturbed the Old Guard in the Magnolia state who successfully impeded its adoption as a textbook.

From Jyri:

Hunter,
After my last post about discovering "Salt of the Earth" on Youtube, I decided not to catch up with work (this being my first "official" working day after a three-week vacation and there's more than enough piled up on the desk) and  watched the film instead, which I'd last seen as a high-school kid in a "cinema club" the early '70s. Time well spent . Someone once listed it as one of the "100 movies to see before you die". It is hard not to agree. The fact that most of  the non-professional actors were actually involved in the strike gives it a tone that is hard to replicate. But it's not a dramatized or enacted  documentary, it's a real movie,  and there are other themes, too, including the feminist angle. I have to spread the word. Apart from ageing film-buffs such as myself, not many of the present generation here know about it.  . . .

Best wishes to you and yours,
Jyri

And from Jim:

When I taught "Race Relations Through Feature Films" at the U of VT (and 
later at Cath. U.), I included SALT.  It raised issues no other film of 
its time raised -- not only labor but also feminism, as well as 
anti-MX-Amer. preju. of course.

I'm working my way through getting rid of my copies of FREEDOM SUMMER 
and when I do will start using JACKSON MS as my next "premium, " hoping 
to elicit donations to Tougaloo.

Best wishes -- Jim L.

-- 
James W. Loewen

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See Witch Hunt Continues:  (Civil liberties, red-baiting, and
smear challenges faced by a successful organizer and
teacher -- with new comment, new photo:
http://www.hunterbear.org/witch_hunt_continuesthe_southern.htm

And see the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm