[URBAN NOTE] On the racist reaction in Toronto to an interracial dance in 1959

[rfmcdonald]

In his latest Historicist feature, "Banned in Buffalo", Jamie Bradburn notes how some Toronto teens' appearance on a Buffalo television dance show caused a shameful amount of upset here in Toronto. Racism is Canadian.

To a few irate viewers of WGR’s Dance Party, two Toronto teenagers had travelled down the QEW to commit an offensive act live on Buffalo television. The sight of a black boy and white girl dancing together on an early Saturday afternoon in May 1959 was too much to handle. Rather than ignore the complainants, host Pat Fagan alleviated their concerns. The kids from up north should have known better—as he later suggested, they should have followed the old adage “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

It began with the best of intentions. Two members of Malvern Collegiate’s student council, Don Schrank and Margo Taylor, felt most of the school’s social events were geared toward the upper grades. With no help from the school’s administration, they organized a bus trip for 46 students, mostly juniors, to appear on Dance Party on May 23, 1959. Among the participants was 15-year-old Clayton Johnston, who played trumpet in the school band and had won several track trophies. According to the Globe and Mail, Clayton and his sister Carol were the only black students at Malvern at the time.

When the “spotlight dance” segment arrived, Clayton paired off with another 15-year-old, Patty Banks. Fagan estimated up to eight callers complained about the interracial pair. He approached Schrank’s mother Muriel, who was chaperoning the kids, to do something about Johnston and Banks. He suggested that it “would be a good idea” if Clayton wasn’t on camera.

Mrs. Schrank was flabbergasted.

Such calls reflected recent racial tensions in Buffalo. Black migration into the city grew following the Second World War, and was accompanied by white flight into the suburbs during the 1950s. Areas they settled into, such as the Ellicott District east of downtown, were subjected to urban renewal plans. An interracial riot among Buffalo teens at Crystal Beach amusement park near Fort Erie in 1956 provided plenty of fuel for the fears of anxious whites. “In the midst of a growing civil rights movement and rising rates of juvenile delinquency,” historian Virginia Wolcott notes in her book Race, Riots and Roller Coasters, “community elites deemed that interracial subculture subversive. To them the Crystal Beach riot suggested that integration was not merely subversive but potentially destructive.” Those fears weren’t alleviated by the rise of rock n’ roll—popular white WKBW DJ George “Hound Dog” Lorenz built a following promoting black acts to mixed audiences, and broadcast live from black clubs.

After receiving the news, Clayton left the studio. The Star noted that he walked for a mile in the rain to “cool off” before returning to WGR to watch the rest of the show in the lounge with a station employee. The other kids were stunned, though it took a while to realize what had happened. “Hardly anyone knew about it until the program was three-quarters over,” Valerie Taw told the Star. “If we had known earlier, drastic measures would have been taken.”

Clayton’s parents watched him and Banks dance back in Toronto, and noticed something was amiss. “Then we didn’t see him again and we thought something like this had happened,” his father Leonard told the Globe and Mail. “Over there they don’t seem to realize that they have a responsibility to allow mixed dancing even if a few of their listeners to call. Only a crackpot would complain.” Banks’s mother called it a “very unfortunate incident” and noted to the press how upset her daughter was.