Joan Jones

Civil rights activist

• Born: September 26, 1939
• Birthplace: Buffalo, New York
• Died: April 1, 2019
• Place of death: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Deathplace: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Significance: Joan Jones was a leading advocate and activist for racial justice in Nova Scotia, Canada, beginning in the 1960s. She and her husband, Rocky, created numerous programs and groups to challenge embedded racial injustice in Nova Scotia.

Background

Joan Jones was born on September 25, 1939, to Eugene and Elsie Bonner. Eugene had grown up in Montreal and Toronto and became well-known in the local amateur boxing circles. In 1924, he traveled to Paris with the Canadian Olympic boxing team but did not compete. He was inducted into the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame in 1937. Following his boxing career, Eugene worked as a porter for the Canadian Pacific Railroad and later as a maintenance worker at a local school.

Although Joan was born in Buffalo, New York, she and her sister Donna were raised in Oakville, Ontario, just south of Toronto. She graduated from Oakville Trafalgar High School. Following her graduation, Joan moved to Toronto to seek work. There, she met Burnley “Rocky” Jones. Jones was a fifth-generation Black Canadian from Nova Scotia. They married in 1961 and moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Rocky, a lawyer and educator, secured a teaching position at Dalhousie University and eventually opened his own law firm.

Life’s Work

Halifax had a relatively small Black community, numbering roughly 22,000 in a city of nearly one million people. Yet, racism was highly prevalent in the 1960s when the Joneses arrived. Several Black communities existed at the edges of Halifax. Black people were not allowed in White neighborhoods unless they were there to work. After dark, they were under threat of arrest if they remained in the city proper. Many Black people in Halifax could trace their lineage back to former enslaved people who fought with the British during the American Revolution (1775–1783) and had fled to Nova Scotia following the war’s end. Descendants of Jamaican rebel enslaved people (Maroons) and remnants from the War of 1812 (1812–1815) also lived in Halifax.

The embedded racism experienced by Blacks in Halifax for over two centuries had never been successfully challenged. As a minority, the Black community held no political or social power. Due to a lack of opportunities and neglect from the city of Halifax, the Black community was impoverished. Blacks had a disproportionally high rate of school dropouts and incarceration.

Rocky and Joan soon became the hub of the Black movement to create social justice. Whereas Martin Luther King, Jr. preached civil disobedience in the United States, Rocky and Joan were much closer in philosophy to Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, a Black civil-rights group that use more confrontational methods in its quest for equality. The intent was not to incite violence but rather to defend oneself and one’s family and community.

Rocky and Joan focused on employment, housing, Black incarceration, and police brutality. Their home became the meeting place to discuss issues of racial injustice and brainstorm solutions. Numerous notable guests, including Harry Belafonte, Stokely Carmichael, and Miriam Makeba, sat in their living room to be part of the ongoing discussion. With Carmichael’s help, they created the Black United Front of Novia Scotia, which fought against job and housing discrimination and provided legal services.

Rocky became the face and voice of the Black empowerment movement in Halifax, but Joan was the driving force behind the scenes. When they founded the Kwacha House, an interracial youth club in Halifax, as a place for Black youth to find community and a sense of empowerment, Joan ran the day-to-day affairs. She edited Rocky’s speeches, fed him ideas, and created the events that earned him the name “Rocky the Revolutionary.” However, the Joneses’ radicalism brought considerable negative attention from the White community and the authorities. After they hosted Carmichael and the Black Panthers, Halifax police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service bugged and surveilled their house.

While Rocky was making appearances and traveling much of the time, Joan stayed behind to rear their five children. She also had numerous business endeavors to keep the family afloat while Rock was busy in his crusade. Joan worked at the Canadian public works department and the provisional government. She also owned two boutiques. She retired from her work at Nova Scotia’s Office of Legal Aid in 2008. During the 1990s, she wrote a column for Halifax’s Chronicle Herald. Despite hate mail from White readers, she continued to write.

Joan died on April 1, 2019. She was 79 years.

Impact

Joan Jones, along with Rocky Jones, brought Black activism to Nova Scotia in the 1960s, confronting systemic racism that left the Black community poor, overpoliced, and overincarcerated. They established political, community, and social groups to tackle such issues as lack of opportunity, ongoing segregation, police brutality, and other forms of racial injustice. Their bold style, in line with the empowerment theory of Carmichael and the Black Panthers, felt threatening to the White establishment. Thus, they earned unwanted attention from police agencies and the White community.

While Rocky stood on stage as the voice of Black empowerment, Joan was the force that quietly pushed the movement forward. Although she and Rocky eventually divorced, they continued to be friends and work together toward racial justice in Nova Scotia until the end of their lives. At the end of 2022, their son, Augy Jones, was named as a member of a government panel studying the effects of environmental racism in Nova Scotia.

Personal Life

Joan married Burnley “Rocky” Jones in 1961. They later divorced but they remained friends until Rocky’s death in 2013. They had five children together.

Bibliography

DeMont, John. “Activist Joan Jones Wasn’t Afraid of Anything.” Saltwire, 4 Apr. 2019, www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/opinion/john-demont-activist-joan-jones-wasnt-afraid-of-anything-297305/. Accessed 1 July 2023.

Genzlinger, Neil. “Joan Jones, 79, Force Against Racism in Nova Scotia, Dies.” The New York Times, 11 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/obituaries/joan-jones-force-against-racism-in-nova-scotia-dies-at-79.html. Accessed 1 July 2023.

Patil, Anjuli, and Mairin Prentiss. “‘The Power Behind the Throne’: Civil Rights Activist Joan Jones Remembered.” CBC, 2 Apr. 2019, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-social-activist-joan-jones-has-died-1.5080648. Accessed 1 July 2023.

Poitras, Wendie L. “Rocky and Joan: A History of Sacrifice.” The Coast, 5 July 2018, www.thecoast.ca/news-opinion/rocky-and-joan-a-history-of-sacrifice-15826432. Accessed 1 July 2023.

Tutton, Michael. “Joan Jones, Civil Rights Trailblazer Who Helped Create the Nova Scotia Project, Dies at Age 79.” Toronto Star, 2 Apr. 2019, www.thestar.com/halifax/2019/04/02/civil-rights-trailblazer-joan-jones-the-power-behind-the-throne-dies-at-age-79.html. Accessed 1 July 2023.