Black rights advocate refuses to quit http://www.dalgazette.ca/html/module/displaystory/story_id/2883/format/html/displaystory.html
February 19, 2009 Tim Mitchell Staff Contributor The phone rings in Burnley "Rocky" Jones' office, and he rises from his seat. "Excuse me one moment," he says. It's a large finished basement filled with hunting and fishing memorabilia. Still, there's a desk, filing cabinets and a plaque on the door that reads "B.A. Rocky Jones and Associates." This is where Jones operates his law firm. "Hello? Uh-huh, did you go to Dalhousie Legal Aid? Well, I'm actually in the process of retirement," Jones says with a sigh. He hangs up after a minute or two and returns to his desk. "Now where was I? Oh yes," Jones picks up telling the story of an opposition to city plans of building a massive public housing project in North End Halifax in the 1960s that would have forced tenants from their homes. "The tenants were able to organize. The whites that were trying to keep the blacks out of the labour union now had to work with us because we all lived there," Jones says about the area around Maynard and Creighton Streets in the North End. "It became a class issue more than a race issue." Jones, who got the nickname Rocky at 16 for repeatedly singing Bill Haley and his Comets' song "Don't Knock the Rock" has always been comfortable with a good fight. Now, at the age of 67, he says he is ready to retire from practising law. "It's hard because my phone keeps ringing and I'm too stupid to say no," he laughs. Jones was a pioneer of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The national press painted him as "Rocky the Revolutionary," a radical militant and Canada's own Stokely Carmichael, who was the honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party an African-American group that fought for black rights and the man accredited with coining the term "Black Power." Jones shook up whites in Canada in 1968 when he brought Carmichael and the Black Panthers to Halifax to jumpstart progressive change and draw international attention to the city's racial tensions. The Black Panthers' visits led to the creation of the Black United Front of Nova Scotia that same year. Jones was under RCMP surveillance for many years and the police kept thousands of pages worth of records on him, following his every move. He was aware of the RCMP's "undercover" surveillance and would often approach its unmarked vehicles to offer them coffee in the morning. One time Jones even asked officers for a drive, seeing as they'd have to follow him anyway. On Jan. 20, Jones kept five of his 14 grandchildren home from school to watch President Barack Obama's inauguration on television. "I don't know if they'll remember," says Jones. "Hopefully in 20 or 30 years when I'm dead they'll understand why I kept them out of school." Jones believes Obama can only begin the process of implementing change rather than implementing change itself. He says Obama makes a big difference to the image of change. "Now a black kid growing up in the worst circumstances believes that they can rise to the top," he says. Jones was the fourth of 10 children. Growing up in a small black community called the Marsh on the outskirts of Truro, N.S., he was no stranger to racism. Because of the colour of his skin, he was not allowed to bowl at the local bowling alley, even though he worked there, nor was he allowed to play at the local pool hall or eat at certain restaurants. He says the Marsh had a lot to do with him ending up as a civil rights activist. "I was so protected in that community and encouraged to do anything I wanted to do," says Jones. He recalls learning to swim at the age of seven by being thrown in the river by some older children; he thinks his older brother may have been there to "help" him learn to swim as well. "In this life you can only sink or swim," he says. At 16, he quit school and joined the army, but only lasted a year because he "got into too much trouble." A few years later he took a job driving tractor trailers in Toronto and he says that gave him time to read about his interests in black politics. It was in Toronto that Jones first became a prominent face for the Black Power movement. He was working for the treasury department of the Ontario government and one day, on his way home from work, he noticed a group of white protestors. They were protesting the denial of voting rights to blacks in Selma, Alabama. Jones, along with his then-wife Joan and their one-year-old daughter Tracey, protested alongside the group, thinking they couldn't let white people fight their battles. As the only black man at the demonstration, Jones was a magnet for media attention. He soon found his face on newspapers and TV screens across the country. Talking to the national press, he found in himself a new sense of charisma and an ability to motivate groups. He became an in-demand speaker at civil rights demonstrations and he quit his job at the treasury department to travel the U.S. and speak to people. He brought the fight back to Halifax in 1965 when, along with Joan, he helped found and run Kwacha House, a Halifax youth program where he taught his philosophy of social reform to predominantly black youth. "They (the youth) were important in bringing about change in their own communities. We taught them that they have the power to implement change," says Jones. At Kwacha, a word from Zambia meaning "freedom," they held discussions about employment, housing and education opportunities. The youth group also formed its own police force to keep hard drugs out of Halifax communities and built a park for young children called the "Tot-Lot." "It got eaten up with the development back in the '60s," says Jones. "That rolls off my tongue like nothing, doesn't it?" Jones' daughter Tracey Jones, now the manager of ESL and Diversity Services for the Halifax Public Libraries, remembers what it was like growing up with parents fighting in the civil rights movement. "As a child growing up, you don't know much about what's going on," she says. "As you get older, you start to feel like this is the example you want to grow up to. I didn't really understand the significance at the time. People like Stokely Carmichael, they were just friends of the family." Tracey was one of the first black students at LeMarchant Elementary School. At the time, she was the only black student. "I was out of my comfort zone I was used to everyone looking like me. I got called names and I had to fight back. I do remember the principal, Mr. Black. He died years ago, but he took good care of me." Jones eventually went back to school himself and graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in history. He also earned a law degree from Dalhousie in 1992 through the Indigenous Blacks and Mi'Kmaq (IBM) program. He would later help found the Transition Year Program (TYP), a one-year program designed for First Nations and African-Canadians who "do not yet meet standard Dalhousie entrance requirements." Jones taught as a part-time lecturer in the program for 10 years. Jones would like to retire, but he's not ready to give up the good fight. His former wife, Joan Jones, who recently retired from her job at the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission, says she understands why he wants to retire. "We've worked hard on the causes we've worked on," says Joan. "We've earned it. He probably won't totally retire, but he should be able to participate when he wants to and not when he's obligated to." As Jones sees it, there have been three phases in the international Black Power movement. The first was a philosophy of integration, usually driven by white supporters. Then came the black nationalist philosophy, and now, Jones says, the third phase has moved back to an integration philosophy. "This time it's not designed by whites, but by co-operation," says Jones, "and that's what we see with the Obama phenomenon. Now we're in a phase where there is that interracial co-operation to the point where a black person can have the leadership role." But Jones doesn't see this as an acceptance of the black race. "Society has not changed to accept black people, only to accept a well-mannered, well-educated, well-positioned black man," says Jones. "For all intents and purposes, he is one of them as much as he is one of us. He's managed to walk the finest line that I've ever seen anyone walk. He acknowledges his roots but he doesn't frighten people because he's trained." Jones says Canadians deserve to acknowledge that this country's leadership has progressed to the point that Canada's highest political official is a black woman. "People forget that we've already done that," Jones explains. "The problem is I don't think most little boys and girls know who she (Governor General Michaëlle Jean) is. We need to tell them." -- Jones would like to start his own fishing show if he ever gets around to retiring and he's also in the process of "supposedly" writing an autobiographical book about his fights for Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s he hasn't quite gotten around to it yet. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sixties-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
