Kent Minault
Oral History of the Early Digger Movement Through Performance Art
Kent is one of the participants in the Diggers from the earliest moments of
this indigenous movement. He stands out as the humble incarnation of those
17th-century revolutionaries whose name the latter-day visionaries assumed. In
Emmett Grogan's memoir of the San Francisco Diggers, Kent appears on the stage
of Digger-Do at every important stop along the way: as one of the puppeteers
arrested at the Intersection Game; as one of the leaping defendants captured by
a Chronicle photographer on the steps of the courthouse after their charges were
dropped; as one of the instigators of the march on the local police station to
free the Hells Angels bikers at the Death of Money Parade; as one of the
planners of (and performers at) the Invisible Circus; as one of the organizers
of the Cole Street free store, Trip Without A Ticket; and innumerable other such
involvements. But Emmett's highest praise for Kent is that he, along with a few
others, in those early days of 1966, "had maintained the daily supply of Free
Food for the Panhandle." Kent was one of a small group who undertook to keep
Free Food going after the initial impulse.
Here is Kent's remembrance of those early moments. This video was produced in
2013, and covers the first six months of the San Francisco Digger story. Kent is
at prime performance, using all the skillful means of his acting repertoire to
tell us his story.
An oral history performance by Kent Minault
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