The Black, Brown, White, and Red Blues: The Beating of Clarence Clemons

A number of recent works have dealt with 'human rights history,' concentrating upon the efforts of groups to improve protection for human rights in the immediate postwar period. This paper deals with one aspect of this history. However, while earlier publications have often examined developments in Ontario and at the national level, this paper investigates human rights history in British Columbia, although also demonstrating that the Vancouver human rights community had close ties to Ontario groups and national human rights organizations. To do this, the paper presents a case study ­ the beating (by the police) and subsequent death of a black longshoreman in 1952. The case was, for awhile, a minor cause célèbre in Vancouver, but it is difficult to conclude that justice was served by the efforts of the human rights community, for local activists were badly fragmented by racial, class, and ideological divisions, as well as by the reluctance of most 'respectable' Vancouverites to admit that racism was a serious issue. If Canada since the war has been transformed by a 'rights revolution,' in the early fifties the process had just begun.