Joe Drummond - the Barbershop Sit-in (1964) and his leadership of the Black Community in Saint John, N.B.

Young Black boxers pose with trophies at the Main Street Forum, Saint John, N.B., in 1954. (Photo available from Vintage Photo & Frame Ltd, Saint John, N.B.)

It was an era when several Saint John barbers still refused to cut Black hair, and when White Catholics were still secretly discriminated against by several local employers. Patterns of prejudice in 1950s Saint John cut across racial and religious lines.

Some memories never evaporate. They are either too painful or too important to let go. This Internet magazine (Blog) is devoted to the memory of the Portland-Saint John Valley, but my own childhood and youth was spent primarily in the Rifle Range (now "Crescent Valley") located much deeper in Saint John's North End. I sometimes teach Multiculturalism (Social Studies Curriculum) here in Vancouver, a city that knows only the legacy of White - Asian animosities, and students are always amazed when I relate stories of growing up in Saint John, N.B. I retain memories of a couple of very serious race-riots on Churchill Blvd and one in St. Pius X schoolyard, battles which always required a heavy police turnout. I have recorded some of those stories but it will be at least a few years before I move to have them published.

We were the working poor, often resorting to living on a meagre Welfare cheque, and deeply grateful for the hand-me-downs of a few caring friends. All of us sought an escape from life in a Public Housing project and from the constant threat of being beaten up. It was truly amazing how 6-8 Black families could terrorize an entire neighborhood, but they could and they did. Tough girls and tougher boys. Today I credit a liberal education at UNB with blunting my boyhood resentment of what we were forced to go through. Survivors can forgive but they seldom forget. Ask the Israelis. Old time Saint John policemen will tell you that "7 Beat" ended at Visart and Lansdowne. Beyond that was the Rifle Range. Some S.J. policemen called it the "Combat Zone". In my first year at UNB I attended classes at Tucker Park Campus, where a few cops attended our Sociology seminars. One officer, I recall, liked to refer to Churchill Blvd., as "the Boola boola-vard". That was raw and it caught my attention. He was an official witness to events that the local paper chose to ignore.

A curiosity of our predicament was that the father of a few of the most intimidating street fighters in the Rifle Range was Joe Drummond, the voice of the N.B. Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, and an aspiring politician. The NBAACP held its founding meeting on Waterloo Street in September of 1949 but it had languished until the arrival of Joseph Drummond, its most militant and successful leader.

IN 1964 Joe Drummond and members of the N.B. Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NBAACP) staged a "sit-in" at a barbershop on Haymarket Square. The story went National. It was the beginning of his political career.

The genesis of Joe Drummond's political career was a sit-in protest in 1964 which he organized to put pressure on Saint John barbers who still refused to cut the hair of Coloured men. (The term "Black" was not yet in vogue.) The location chosen for Joe's protest was the shop run by Tom Arbing located on Haymarket Square. A dozen or more Black families lived nearby. The protest might have fizzled but some of the tougher old barbers stood by their age-old attitudes instead of accepting the winds of change. Mr. Arbing was quoted as admitting that he had "never cut a colored person's hair in 55 years". It might not have been true. Arbing might simply have been trying to match Drummond's militancy. Whatever the case, the story went "National" and Joe had come to the notice of the men who ran the city.

As the 1960s wore on Joe Drummond found other opportunities to get press, often working in alliance with Black leaders in Halifax, N.S. In 1968 he made the bald claim that the American Black Panther Party had infiltrated Black organizations in the Maritimes, and were trying to "take over Negro rights leadership from local moderates" like himself. It wasn't true, but it got him national coverage.

In August 1970 the Special Senate Committee on Poverty convened a hearing in Saint John. Joseph Drummond, representing the NBAACP, presented a brief in which it was "pointed out that of 264 employers... in the Saint John area, 228 did not employ Blacks". I was 12 at the time and living in poverty. Joe and his family were neighbours. I wish I could have been there to hear him speak. I recall that Joe sought to get on City Council, but I don't recall any of the adults I knew saying anything supportive. It simply wasn't possible. Overall he made a positive contribution to the City by representing the Black community, but he developed a rival in Fred Hodges, who got elected to Common Council in 1974. Hodges was a founding member of the NBAACP and a native Saint Johner. If memory serves, Drummond was Nova Scotia born.

The one thing Joe Drummond did which I know to have been absolutely ludicrous was to orchestrate the banning of Samuel Clemens' novel HUCKLEBERRY FINN in New Brunswick schools. The book was then on the Grade 12 Curriculum, but when I attended Saint John High it was already gone. A pity. (I do recall LORD OF THE FLIES and assorted Shakespeare plays.) Many scholars consider HUCK FINN to be the most influential American novel ever written, and essential reading for a grounding in American Literature. Since university I've read it at least twice. I still find the characters engaging and I certainly enjoy Mark Twain's humour. The Black community wanted the book gone because of Huck's frequent use of the word "Nigger", a word I heard frequently in North End Saint John... usually as a kid staggered home nursing wounds. I never knew a boy brave enough to use that word face-to-face.

I doubt if Joe Drummond ever read HUCK FINN, but he certainly scanned it to make a count of the word "Nigger". Accompanied by members of the N.B. Human Rights Commission he squared off with Lorne McGuigan, the N.B. Education Minister. [McGuigan, a Saint John Tory, was Ed. Minister from 1970-74, under Richard Hatfield.] Joe Drummond's committee wasn't taking prisoners and McGuigan was no watchdog for literacy. He later told a reporter that the committee "expressed concern that the Negro was portrayed as somewhat less than human, or that it could be interpreted that way".

The Minister insisted that they were mistaken, but nonetheless the N.B. Government took the pragmatic step of banning the book. Said McGuigan, "We told them it would be going off (the required list) in June anyway in the normal course of events." The irony of course, is that we were about to witness the era of the Blacksploitation movie, and eventually the hated word "Nigger" became a staple of fabulous Black performers we grew to love such as Richard Pryor and Samuel L. Jackson. But Joe could not have anticipated the shift in Popular Culture any more than George Orwell could anticipate the Internet.

In his latter years Joe Drummond "went African". He loved to appear in public dressed in colourful and authentic African garb, and as he was tall he was a physically imposing figure of a man. In October of 1972 he represented the Federal NDP in Saint John, pulling in 788 votes, or 2.8 percent of the poll. The Tories took the riding. He continued to advocate on behalf of Saint John's Black Community and also for Black prisoners incarcerated at Dorchester Penitentiary. A heart condition felled him in 1975, and I confess that I did not note his passing. That too is a pity, because he took so much life experience and memories with him.

Postscript: I shared the news clipping of Joe's 1964 "sit-it" with members of a Saint John chat group on Facebook. The image drew a visceral response from Ernie Voutour, a Child Care Worker and ex-Saint Johner now living in Montreal. Extracts from his lengthy response:

" My first reactions were feelings of disgust and anger. A photo from 1964 triggered such reactions and emotions in me, all these decades later. ... It's people like Mr. Drummond who changed the views of discrimination. His 'sit in' sent a message...the ripple effect carried through the Saint John community, giving hope and triumphant acknowledgement for those in the family homes of [the] Black community... During the 60s I've seen the look of hate. I've seen it in the eyes of pedestrians, people in passing as I walked to school with friends of 'color'. ...I was part of that movement too. I was very bold back then, if something wasn't right. I had no problem no qualms, no second thoughts of looking an obvious racist right in the eye and saying, 'go fuuckk yourself'. "

New Brunswick Black History Society

This morning I received an email from Ralph Thomas of Saint John. It reads: "Thank you Ron Jack & Thank you Ernie Voutour. We at NBBHS hope to have some more of the Joe Drummond story from his family if at all possible - Some time soon we hope."

I also had a thank-you from Holly Drummond. Until now, the family did not have any information on the 1964 barbershop Sit-in. Amazing what gets lost over time.