From the Civil Rights battlefields to the dazzling arenas of entertainment, Don Hubbard’s rich tapestry of a life, marked by bravery, enterprise, and charisma, continues to inspire and enchant. A titan of liberty and a jovial raconteur, his story is one of unending fascination.
The name Don Hubbard should need no introduction to readers of this magazine, both in Louisiana and throughout the nation. The venerable Civil Rights-era icon is renowned as a stalwart of the valiant struggle for racial dignity, equality and justice, a titan of liberty and man’s existential quest to be free. In short, he is tantamount to a living legend in New Orleans and one whose remarkable life story is so engaging, enriching and edifying that when he speaks, often with the gravitas and messianic fervour of a griot, you’d be foolish not to listen avidly with full attention. A remarkably distinguished and momentous, not to mention colourful life, rich in notable and significant accomplishments, affecting tangible societal change and uplift for hitherto oppressed black people, Hubbard’s has been, for the most part at least, a wonderful – and wonderfully meaningful – life. It is a life which has encompassed being a crusading Civil Rights leader, an indefatigable community organiser, a maverick social and political activist, a bona fide hero in the fight for racial equality and an eloquent but outspoken champion of de-segregation, as well as a successful boxing promoter, a wily entrepreneur, an intrepid emergency seaman and a fearless world traveller (to places as far-flung as India, Russia, South America, Egypt and Cuba).
Strongly but rightfully opinionated, as befits a man who has lived as much and to the extent that he has, Hubbard is august, humane, and sagacious when we speak, but also jovial, funny and irreverent, his razor-sharp mind and ebullient personality both supremely evident. As we touch upon the various incarnations of his exceptional career, he imbues the narrative arc of his life’s journey with his distinctive energy, peerless charisma, and wry humour.
Hubbard, who blends a quick wit with skilful conversation and refrains from unnecessary name-dropping, truly shines when recounting invaluable anecdotes. These often involve his interactions, collaborations, or encounters with some of Black America’s most prominent figures of the 20th century, such as the multifaceted entertainer Lena Horne, the shrewd boxing promoter Don King, or the monumental human and thinking boxer Muhammad Ali. Simply put, people seek Hubbard’s company for good reason, and to hear his memories is undeniably both an honour and a privilege.
Upbringing
Resolutely proud of his local and perhaps somewhat inauspicious Crescent City roots, Hubbard explains, “I was born and raised in New Orleans. I was raised in a home with my father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother. My father’s name was Henry (from Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and my mother’s was Thelma (from New Orleans, Louisiana). My grandfather’s name was Ralph Reason (from Houma, Louisiana), and my grandmother’s name was Stella (from Bayou Lafourche, aka LaFourche Crossing, Louisiana). My father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, and my mother was a school teacher. My father’s grandmother was named Caroline Hall (Dolph Hubbard).”
Don Hubbard On His Creole Heritage And Identity
With the Creole connection on his father’s side somewhat distant and arguably even tenuous, Hubbard is candid about his ostensibly debatable Creole heritage. “My dad said that his grandma was a Creole, but I didn’t know her.” He continues, shrewdly observing how race as a social construct is essentially fluid, especially when combined with the variables of money and class. “We could never figure out why my great-grandmother had a property in downtown Baton Rouge, a block off Government Street. In one of the censuses, I think she was listed as a mulatto. Then, the next census, she was coloured, and she died a Negro.” And I do have a picture of Caroline and Adolph. With a sardonic smile, Hubbard concludes, “So we don’t know what the hell my grandma was, but we know my grandpa was 100% Mandingo.”
Hubbard then relates his grandfather’s genealogy and where his surname was derived from with a detached matter-of-factness, despite the nefarious spectre of slavery and its indelible legacy casting a baleful shadow over his not-too-distant forebears. “My grandpa Adolph was the first generation out of slavery. They said that his daddy was ten years old when the family who owned him died and willed him to another family. Now, they did not have a plantation in Louisiana that was called Hubbard. The only thing we found was that there was a sawmill. So he probably was a slave on that sawmill, and that’s how he got the name, Hubbard.”
Education
Hubbard’s recalcitrant, devil-may-care nature manifested itself from an early age. Perhaps alluding to French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus’s famous quote about life and football, Hubbard has already said, “Everything I learned about politics and life, I learned in kindergarten. What you learn is: that’s yours, that’s his. Yes, sir. No, Sir. Yes, Ma’am. No, Ma’am. That’s the foundation for life, it is mutual respect.”
As he recounts with a hearty chuckle, his coming from a middle-class family ironically caused him to get into lots of fights at school. “I went to Thomy Lafon Elementary School, but my mother took me out and sent me to Bethlehem Lutheran School, where they had a system of corporal punishment because I was always getting in fights at the other school because I wasn’t from the Projects. The school was in the middle of the Projects, and I always had creases in my pants. Every evening, I had to fight someone. I didn’t mind fighting them, as I had to go into the Projects to go to my cousin’s in the afternoon, so if I got into a fight, I got into a fight.”
Proceeding to elucidate the next stage of his educational journey, he says, “After that, I went to Carter G. Woodson Junior High School, which really gave me an understanding of who Carter Woodson was and what that meant to me.” Named after the great 19th-century African-American scholar and historian, the school imbued its students with pride in Woodson’s dedication to celebrating the contributions of black people, something which Hubbard found both uplifting and inspiring.
“Then I went to Walter L Cohen High School, the Negro Walter L. Cohen. That’s what it said in school history because there must have been a white Walter L. Cohen. So I guess that one was Jewish.” Sadly, given the prevalent climate of racial segregation, the school – a black school – chronically lacked the resources which white schools and their pupils took for granted. As Hubbard recalls wistfully, “In the three years that we were at high school, we never had a new textbook. You’d receive a textbook that had three or four white kids’ names in it before it got to you.”
By his own admission, Hubbard didn’t learn very much in high school. Explaining why he was effectively turned against learning by the school’s bigoted ethos, he states ruefully, “They used to do some very ignorant things at that school. For example, they would vote on the best-dressed boy, which made no sense to me because all of our families were in different financial brackets.” With impeccable logic, he adds, “What the hell do I care what you’ve got on if you’re my friend?”
Hubbard then addresses the ingrained, shade-based prejudice against dark-skinned people which he felt teachers at the school were instilling in their pupils – essentially a form of Fanonian self-hate. With genuine sadness, he elegiacally recalls, “It was at Walter L. Cohen that I was taught to not like myself.” He adds, “A girl used to walk to school with us every morning. She was fine, smooth, good-looking, black like me, with long black hair. She wanted to be a majorette. One morning, we were going to school, and the teacher told her she didn’t make the majorette squad. We said, “Why? What happened?” She was told that she was too dark to be a majorette. “They told you what?” It hit me right here.”
Out of principle and by way of protest to highlight their racialised aesthetic double standards and make a point to the school authorities about the evils of pigmentocracy, Hubbard then campaigned for a very unattractive but light-skinned girl to be voted Prettiest Girl in the Class. As he explains with a wry smile and his florid and poetic but equally direct and at times brutal turn of phrase, “This girl would make you look like an African. She was so white, but you could put her face in dough and make animal crackers out of it because she was just that unattractive.” For engineering her victory, and thus exposing the school’s Eurocentric aesthetic standards, his teachers punished him by suspending him for two weeks.
On learning what had happened, Hubbard’s mother immediately went back to the school to remonstrate with the principal about her son’s unjust treatment. “My mother never told me until the day she died what happened in that principal’s office or what she said. She just told me to go back to class.”
As a punishment for his recalcitrance, the school wouldn’t let Hubbard graduate with his class. As he recounts, “Before my mother died, I had an opportunity to talk to her and I said, “Mother, I owe you an apology. It always hurt me because I know your friends were filling out the invitations to come to the graduation, and you never got to see me march.” To which she replied, “Do you think that piece of paper or that cap and gown was going to make you the man you are today? “What are they doing now?” I said, “Well, one of them is an old guy in the post office, another one’s on crack, and another is in the penitentiary.” She said, “See? It was a good thing you didn’t march.”
Grandmother’s Sage Advice
Extolling the wise and judicious life advice his grandmother, Stella Reason Jackson, gave him, Hubbard recalls, “She said, “Never get caught having a small dream, boy.” He then admits, “I didn’t know what that meant when she said it. And I didn’t find out what it meant, until your first daughter is born. Then that’s when you start dreaming for her.”
The Importance Of Home Ownership
Hubbard’s father schooled him from an early age on the importance of owning bricks and mortar. As he explains, “My dad told me, ”You have to build a house. You have to build a brick double house, so you can live on one side and have a tenant help you pay the mortgage on the other side.” Taking the advice to heart, he acted upon it. He continues, “This is the third house my wife, and I built since we were married. We were blessed. We never had a landlord. We moved out of our parents’ house, moved into a house we owned and a new house was built. I built three houses for my wife.”
Marriage At 19
Hubbard, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, got married to his girlfriend Rose, aged 19 as he relates in his own inimitably direct style, with palpable honesty. “It wasn’t supposed to last. I don’t know how it happened, but she got pregnant. She was a girl who grew up in the neighbourhood, a little skinny girl, but she had nice legs, though.”
Despite having aspirations to attend college and even having enrolled, on telling his father about his girlfriend falling pregnant, Hubbard’s dad acted resolutely and with a draconian swiftness, “What do you mean you’re going to college? You never liked school. Let me tell you how this works. We’re going to send Rose to college and you’re taking your ass out there and find a job.”
Early Career
Hubbard’s subsequent career as a Civil Rights leader is the stuff of legend – if one can indeed call the panoply of professions he has excelled at a career per se, given that a chronicle of his professional life reads more like an astonishing, picaresque adventure novel, full of myriad incarnations and astonishingly diverse metiers. Irrespective of the appellation employed, his early career was humble, and he had an unpropitious start.
Hubbard readily admits that starting out was a struggle. ”I got married at a very early age and my marriage license said, Don C, Hubbard, occupation, none.” Unashamed about the modest nature of his first employment, he recalls, “The first job I had after getting married, I parked cars at the congress garage on Gravis Street, a nine-story parking lot. I had a wife and baby. I was making $48 a week from four in the evening until midnight and I had to make $25 a night in tips in order for my budget to make sense.” He adds, with a note of audible pride in his voice, “The average tip was a dime, but I always made it to $25.”
Becoming A Civil Rights Activist
In 1960, Hubbard began to get heavily involved in Civil Rights activism after a conversation about what was happening at that time in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a friend in the movement, Rudy Lombard. Spurred on by a growing awareness of these, and other accounts of heinous racial injustice even closer to home, he became one of the founders of the New Orleans chapter of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), and duly helped build the chapter into one of the strongest student chapters in the country, despite many of its members being in and out of jail for their efforts to overturn pernicious Jim Crow laws and de-segregate the city.
When drawn on those in the CORE movement whose motivations (and actions) differed from his own, Hubbard is unapologetically but politely withering in his assessment of their motives, “We knew all the folks by name who joined with the intent of writing their books. They didn’t do very much, but they wrote the books. I guess we’re kind of behind in that because those of us who paid a lot of dues in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, we weren’t interested in writing books. A lot of the kids from the East Coast, they just wanted to write a book and have a press conference.”
When asked where the impetus came from, which prompted him to become an activist involved in the (often dangerous) struggle for racial equality, Hubbard is candid, humility evident in his voice. “It was about doing the right thing. When you get to an age, and you have children and want things to be different from your children than it is for you, it’s a natural thing you do.”
However, an earlier, deeply memorable childhood incident also greatly influenced Hubbard’s decision to dedicate his life to standing up for the oppressed, righting social wrongs and campaigning against racial injustice. Remembering a ride on the streetcar with his mother to Canal Street when he was five years old and wasn’t aware of the different racial laws which stipulated where black people were allowed to sit, Hubbard said he told his mother that he wanted to sit in the front with the other children. However, instead of telling her son that he couldn’t because the front of the streetcar was reserved for white people, Hubbard’s mother took him by the hand to the back of the streetcar and said, “Come on baby, let’s sit over here.”
In answer to her son’s question about why, his mother’s laconic yet highly prescient response still resonates with Hubbard to this day: “No baby, because they’re waiting for you to change it.”
Attitude To Non-Violence
However, Hubbard is swift to point out that his commitment to the cause was not unequivocal, making his dislike for the non-violent message of MLK clear. “I said I didn’t sign on for that non-violent bullshit. I wasn’t signing on for turning the other cheek because I had no idea what my response would be if somebody spat in my face. Maybe I could accept a slap or a punch, but if somebody spat in my face, it was going to be a problem.” He adds, thinking back to those early encounters, “I said I’ll do what I can do, but please don’t put me walking in this situation where I thought I was going to get slapped, and I wasn’t going to respond.”
Moreover, as Hubbard readily admits, and with an enviable sense of realpolitik, consciously downplaying his own bravery, “I didn’t participate where I thought I would be voluntarily going into a situation where I could lose my life.”
Organising Marches
In 1963, at the height of the era of racial tension and unrest, Hubbard was one of the organisers of the march on City Hall in New Orleans. The organisers took great pride in emphasising that it would be a peaceful march. They intended to present officials with a petition seeking fair employment opportunities for African-Americans and remove all signs marked “Colored Only” at segregated water fountains, bathrooms, etc. According to Hubbard, the march drew over 10,000 people.
The key organisers were Dutch Morial, Don Hubbard, Oretha Haley, Rev. A.L. Davis, Rudy Lombard, and Arthur Chapital. Don Hubbard, who was 24 at that time and the youngest of the organisers, was the organiser of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality).
Hubbard explained the development of the idea, stating, “They just had the big march on Washington. And we said, ‘We are not going to Washington. Let somebody else do that. There’s enough to be done here. So, we started discussing marching on City Hall here in New Orleans.” He continued, “Then ministers decided they wanted to be involved, then a couple of priests, and then it just blew up. But I was the primary organiser of the march because it was a young people’s march.”
He shared his organisational technique with wisdom, emphasising, “I had to do it in such a way that the young people knew that it’s going to be a march and that there’s not going to be any trouble. And there was no trouble because I had to organise it in such a way with the different sections of the city.”
Hubbard was especially proud of his role in organising white students from Tulane and Loyola Universities to participate, saying, “It took a lot of guts for those white kids to join in a civil rights march in 1963. I’m sure many of their parents weren’t too pleased.” His leadership and efforts played an essential role in moving the march from a nominal idea to an actual event that contributed to the larger civil rights movement.
Drawing on his reservoirs of vast experience, he concludes, “You just can’t call a march – you have got to have a connection in these pockets in the city where people believe you. And I have a technique in doing that.”
Hubbard subsequently organised and participated in many marches, including one demonstration at Southern University in Baton Rouge to protest segregated stores in which he experienced first-hand tear gas. He relates what transpired that day, “The sheriff decided that he was going to turn the tear gas on us. One hit me right in the chest, and I wanted Everything in me to come up through my nose, eyes, ears, and mouth and throw it up. My friend Sylvia Copper, a student at Southern University who participated in the march, saw what happened, immediately dragged me down an alley, and turned the faucet on to rinse my face and eyes. PS: she never lets me forget it. (Smile!)”
Explaining the methodology of how to organise a march, Hubbard adds, “Every march was goal oriented. So if you march to de-segregate with lunch counters, you do that. If you march for public accommodations, you do that”.
Hubbard quickly and astutely realised the strength of his negotiating technique and the city’s weakness. “The key to organising in New Orleans is the fact that because New Orleans depends on tourism, they don’t want anything to mess up tourism. So when you start your march, you know where to put your thumb on that weak spot. And sometimes the threat of the march is more powerful than the march itself.”
Hubbard’s rationale was clear – and wholly centred upon getting people to mobilise and get to the ballot box to vote: “Everything we did was goal-oriented, and it had to do with the right to vote because after all the other stuff was over, the only time in this country that you are equal to anybody is when you walk in that poll to cast your vote. You are as powerful as the wealthiest guy in America. But he only has one vote. So when I walk in that poll, I’m as powerful as him.”
Infamous Drive Down To Mississippi
In the summer of 1964, Hubbard embarked upon a drive down from New York to Mississippi in a Ford Falcon station wagon. It was a drive that would become enshrined in the annals of the Civil Rights movement for frankly murderous reasons, as it was the same car that the activists Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were later found murdered in. By Hubbard’s own admission, it was by far the most dangerous thing he ever did.
As he explains, “Lena Horne arranged for us to use a couple of vehicles in the Mississippi Summer project. They convinced me to go to White Plains, New York, pick up this station wagon, take it down to New York City CORE HQ and put all these posters and pamphlets with slogans like “Vote freedom now!”, covered it up with a sheet so nobody could see it and then drive that car from New York City to Mississippi.” Hubbard adds in a deadpan voice, “It was the longest ride of my life.”
Exhausted after a late night spent on the town partying with a friend the night before, Hubbard set off for Mississippi, thinking that he could drive non-stop. But soon, the tiredness began to kick in. As he explains, “I got deep into Mississippi, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I go to this service station, and I’m waiting for the guy to come out and pump my gas. These two white boys are sitting there on the bench looking at me like I know so damn well they didn’t expect me to come pump that gas. That’s when I woke up. I got out, filled that tank up, and I was still groggy, and said, “What am I going to do?” Then it dawned on me. These two little crackers are sitting there looking at this brand new car with a temporary New York license plate on.”
Acutely aware that, as a black man in Mississippi driving a brand new car with out-of-state license plates, his life was potentially at risk, Hubbard fortuitously gave a lift to a white Military Airforce hitch-hiker that was on his way back to Keesler Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi. Thinking on his feet, Hubbard asked if his passenger possessed a driver’s license, and when he learned that he did, then said, “Well, I’ll give you a ride if you drive.”
Ruminating on how close he effectively came to death on that trip, Hubbard is both stoical and philosophical, wholly devoid of hyperbole. “When I think about it, if the Klan had pulled him over because there’s a temporary New York license plate on that car with all that civil rights stuff, they probably would’ve killed both of us.”
Community Organizer
Another professional incarnation Hubbard has relished over the years is that of an indefatigable community organiser responsible for, amongst other things, getting the City of New Orleans to bring a mobile health unit to his neighbourhood when they refused to provide a health clinic. In so doing, his campaigning ensured that the local children could receive their immunisations before school.
Given his unrelenting tenacity in pursuit of social and racial justice, Hubbard did not limit such laudable community representation to healthcare but also extended his activity to tackle the absence of street lights, refusing garbage collections, and, even more importantly, the local media, having realised the strategic importance of controlling the narrative and being able to disseminate information about local issues. And so, after repeated attempts to get the local black weekly newspaper interested in covering the community stories he felt were important, to little avail, the editor of the newspaper said to him in a fit of frustration, “Don, you’re always in my office. I let you in here, and you’re still raising hell about what I’m not doing. Go print your own damn paper, young man!”
Thus, after getting his own people to write the necessary articles and to take pictures, Hubbard, with his by now customary chutzpah, went back to the newspaper editor, admitted that he did not know how actually to print a newspaper, and unashamedly asked him to print it for him. The newspaper owner, Mr Dejoie of the Louisiana Weekly, said, “Let me see what you have.” I showed him the stories and pictures, and he said, “that’s pretty good.” He then said, “What do you want me to do with this?” Mr Dejoe, owner/editor, agreed to print my paper, and the Gentilly News was born.
For Hubbard, that was the key which “started us on the road to turning our neighbourhood around.” He then duly founded the Gentilly East Development Association (GEDA) in the 1960s to lobby the city for adequate city services, including garbage collection, underground drainage and street paving, collaborating with local pastors, and then went on in 1967 to establish a black political organisation called SOUL (the Southern Organization for Unified Leadership), which lent support to African-Americans seeking public office. Explaining his motivation behind such grassroots activism and the genesis of the latter organisation, he recalls, “What I learned about organising in that company was that it had to evolve into another group because those of us who were involved in Civil Rights knew the importance of voter registration. Why wouldn’t you be registered to vote if you were an educated voter? That was the reason that we went from Civil Rights to a neighbourhood association to a political association.”
Arrest For Drinking from A Whites-Only Water Fountain
Hubbard then recounts with real pathos and emotion the first time he was arrested during the struggle for drinking from a whites-only water fountain during the Civil Rights era. As he relates this egregious incident, it’s hard to believe that such antediluvian prejudices against black people were still being expressed – let alone enshrined in the constitution and upheld by law – sixty years ago.
His motivation for being willing to make a stand and be arrested over the principle of racial equality was altruistic for the next generation. As he says succinctly and with a depth of feeling which resonates, especially with parents, “You do it because it ought to be done for your kids.”
“First time I went to jail was because we were in the supermarket, and this little white kid was drinking water at the water fountain right up on the steps at the water fountain. Then my oldest daughter, she’s a big mouth anyway. She’s always got something to say. She said, “Daddy, I want some water.”
Hubbard recounts this poignant and racially charged episode with dignity and humanity, saying, “So I pulled her up on the little stoop, and she drank where a little white girl had just drunk. A cop is sitting over there watching her, and when she finished drinking, I told Rose, I said, “I’m on my way to jail.” She said, “Why?” I said, “I’m going to drink some of this water.”
The cop came over and said, “Hey, fella. Can you read?” I said, “Yeah, I can read.” He said, “What did that sign say?” I said, “It said white water only.” He said, “What are you doing? I said, “I’m drinking white-only water.” He said, “Well if you take another sip, we’re going to put your black ass in jail. I said, “I’ll be right with you.” And he took me to jail. So, then Rose called her dear friend, Oretha Castle, to tell her that I was on my way to jail. Oretha and several members of CORE got to the jail before me. I was charged with breach of peace and released.
But, Hubbard says, this tragic and emotive story had at least a positive footnote. Years later, the same store where the water fountain incident occurred was called Schwagman Brothers. As he explains, partly incredulous at how attitudes and mindsets can indeed be modified, and once again demonstrating the infamous Hubbardian chutzpah, “25 years later, John Schwagman Jr., whose father had owned the store, had befriended me. And I went to him and said, John, “Have you heard that Jesse Jackson is running for president?” He said, “Yeah. What’s that got to do with me?” I said, “Well, he is trying to move around Louisiana, and he’s got a little truck, but he needs an aeroplane. I want him to use your aeroplane.”
As Hubbard narrates Swagman, Jr’s reply with relish, he smiles mischievously. “He says, “Bad as you talk about my dad, now you’re coming to me to ask me for my aeroplane for Jesse Jackson to run for President?” And I said, “Well, yeah, you say you’re not like your dad.” And he said, “Okay, you got it.”
Concluding with a note of optimism in his voice, he states, “25 years later. You understand what I’m saying – some things do change.”
Police Harassment
Hubbard then touches on a dark period in his life – that of the alleged constant harassment he endured at the hands of the New Orleans Police Department – and one which ironically itself led to his taking another career path altogether. As he recounts it, “I was sitting on the front porch of my parent’s home, and the police came up on the porch and charged me with loitering and arrested me.”
After an altercation with the police, who had allegedly assaulted his grandmother and turned physical, friends advised Hubbard to leave town. Otherwise, it was felt that his life could be in danger.
“Look, you’ve got to get out of town,” my friend said, “because when this policeman shoots you nine times in the back and argues self-defence, nobody’s going to take care of Rose and your two children.” And so he arranged for me to get in a union, and I shipped out of town as an emergency seaman.”
Emergency Seaman
Thus, out of that unpleasant and unedifying encounter with law enforcement emerged another of Hubbard’s somewhat unexpected career manifestations – that of emergency seaman and thus inveterate world traveller. As he explains fondly, “My first trip out of New Orleans from Galveston, Texas was to Odessa in Russia. I stayed about two and a half, almost three years. But I would only work 90 days at a time. I made enough money to come off for another 90 days and go back.”
Thus, Hubbard acquired a wanderlust, and subsequently travelled far and wide, but always to countries where he felt understood. “After I made that trip to Russia, I never went back that way because it was too cold. I’d always go the other way instead, so I went to South America, to India, to Egypt. I went everywhere where it was warm and where they had a feeling for where I had come from originally.”
Boxing Promoter
In the late 1970s, in somewhat of a divergence from his strident, successful Civil Rights activism, Hubbard used his acumen, loquacity and myriad connections to excel in another, very different arena – that of boxing promotion. As he quips with a wry chuckle, “I’m the world’s greatest boxing promoter.” Not a vainglorious boast since, lest we forget, Hubbard was responsible for bringing Muhammad Ali to fight Leon Spinks in New Orleans and the boxing promoter who filled the Superdome with record crowds to watch the fight.
When asked what he said to persuade the greatest boxer of all time to fight in the Crescent City, Hubbard is positively garrulous, recalling the events of their encounter and their conversation as if they were yesterday, not some forty-five years ago. “I went, and I had lunch with Ali. And I just said to him, “Man, I know your trainer wants you to come to Florida and the promoter wants you to go to South Africa. “Two bad options for you,” I said, “First off, Florida, there you can’t draw the kind of crowd you really would want to draw in Florida.” And I said, “And if you go to South Africa, you’ll be the Uncle Tom of the century.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Mr Mandela’s still locked up, and if you went to South Africa, probably black people couldn’t see the fight. They wouldn’t let them come in there. They’d have to stay outside and watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio. And you’ll be the Uncle Tom of the century to go down there and fight for these white folk to see you.” And so he said, “You’re not dumb as you look.”
Hubbard then gives another classic example of Ali’s peerless braggadocio: “Then Ali asked me, “Where do you want me to fight?” I said, “Well, there’s a New Orleans building called the Louisiana Superdome. It’s larger than the Astrodome in Houston. And if you think you could fill it up, maybe that’ll be where you can do it.” He said, “Bigger than the Astrodome?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “It ain’t big enough for me.”
Arguably Hubbard’s crowning entrepreneurial achievement, he brought the Muhammad Ali title fight to New Orleans on September 15, 1978, serving as the bout’s co-promoter. Ali’s last victory was winning the title for the third and final time before a record official turnout of and a worldwide TV audience. The live gate of $7 million was a record at the time. As he recalls, “We drew 76,000 people. It was the largest live gate in the history of boxing in this country then. That’s why I said I’m the world’s greatest boxing promoter.” He proudly adds, “I’m the guy that put the Superdome on the map. No one in the country knew anything about the Louisiana Superdome before the Ali fight.”
To contextualise his record-breaking achievement, Hubbard is at pains to point out. “Let me tell you, that fight was also seen on national television. It wasn’t a closed circuit. You could sit in the living room and watch it for free. I had to make you get off the couch and bring your money.”
After the Ali fight, despite continuing to help promote other heavyweight boxers such as Michael Spinks and Riddick Bowe, Hubbard eventually chose to part company with the profession to preserve his moral compass. He freely admits, “I wasn’t interested in the boxing business because I really don’t like that element – there’s a sleaze factor to it.”
Distrust Of Politicians
Hubbard is scathing in his assessment of most politicians’ motivations, viewing them as mendacious, duplicitous and Janus-faced, wholly interested in self-advancement, self-promotion and personal gain, as opposed to the welfare of the very people they are elected to represent. As he explains with a passion born from extirpating injustice and corruption: “You get to meet all these people in politics, and you realise that the politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth and whistle out the middle while they’re talking.”
His political acumen and concern for people who have been historically denied a voice is evident when he says, “What you try to do is to elect people from the neighbourhoods, so they can bring the message or the needs from the neighbourhood to the political circle. Hopefully, they don’t get to where they think they’re bigger than the neighbourhood because power and egos are very dangerous things in anybody’s hands.”
Three Classes of People
Hubbard then expounds his incisive, thought-provoking theory of social inequality, stating, “There are three classes of people in America. You have probably only heard of two of them – the Haves and the Have Nots. But nobody ever speaks about the third class – a group called the Not Supposed To Have.” Adding ruminatively, he says, “Our life is defined for us. Your job is to make sure that we do enough as the Have Nots to make sure that the Not Supposed To Have do not come and bother us. So we pay taxes, we pay into non-profits, and we do just enough to make sure that they’re satisfied and not feeling like they’re not supposed to have.”
He continues, referencing a trip to India where he witnessed first-hand egregious poverty and desperation from almost medieval impoverishment. “It never dawned on me until the first time I was in Mumbai, India, and I saw the Not Supposed To Have. I saw this woman who had wrapped a baby in a shawl, and his foot was all tied up. The baby must have been about three or four months old, which means she was training that foot. So I asked the guy I was with, “What’s up with that?” He said, “Well, that baby is going to have a deformity and will therefore be an excellent beggar.”
For Hubbard, that sense of malfeasance – and a sense of naked entitlement, also exists closer to home. As he explains, “We just went through something a couple of weeks ago where this former football player in Mississippi, he got the governor to give the University of Mississippi $2 million, I think, or $20 million, whatever it was, some huge amount of money to build a volleyball arena at the school, simply because his daughter was getting ready to go to that school and she had a volleyball scholarship.”
Warming to his theme of the ubiquity of racial injustice and corruption, Hubbard is animated as he states, “But then they discovered the money came from the welfare department that was to go to help poor black people. They had no water in the state capital in Jackson, Mississippi for the black folk to drink from, but they took $20 million of that money and built an arena so that guy’s little lily-white daughter can go play volleyball.”
Full of righteous anger and crusading zeal, he concludes, “Now, this didn’t happen 50 years ago. So when you see a wrong and feel strongly about it, you do something. You don’t wake up one morning and say I’m going to lead anybody or lead any march or lead. You just do it.”
Activism Today
On the subject of today’s activism, Hubbard is reluctant to denigrate the younger generation but is philosophical about how things are different now. “I think the fight in the movement is still there. It’s like voting. We really don’t vote for anything. We vote against stuff, because you don’t know what to vote for and because you get information from too many different sources. You don’t know how to make up your mind. So you got to figure out what it is I’m going there to vote against.” He adds, “Nowadays, you have Black Lives Matter, Women’s Lives Matter. And then what? What’s the goal? All this stuff matters, but nobody’s ready to vote.“
The Problem With The System
Never one to mince his words, Hubbard’s critique of politics still contains elements of veracity: “The problem with politics is that in the Black community, we are always having to vote for the lesser of two evils. We don’t have a clear choice. There’s no difference other than when you talk about party affiliation. They’re all white men.”
Never one to mince his words, Hubbard’s denunciation of the system – and by extension, of the extra-judicial political assassinations which sent shockwaves throughout American 19th and 20th-century history, is trenchant, belligerent, and bellicose. He continues, “So when I think about the way the system is designed, it’s designed to give us somebody and then take them away from us. They gave us Abraham Lincoln, and then they took him back. They gave us John Kennedy, and then they took him back. They gave us Bobby Kennedy. Then they took him back. They gave us Martin Luther King; then they took him back. They gave us Malcolm X, and they took him back. So once you zero in on being a leader, they put a target on your back.”
Honours and Achievements
Given the nature of his extensive and very illustrious career, Hubbard has been awarded numerous honours, including the Avery C. Alexander Civil Rights Award, Marlin Gusman “Living Legends Award”, New Orleans Chapter Urban League “Man of the Year”, “Young Leadership Council” and the Omega Psi Phi “Man of the Year”. In addition, he has been honoured by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana (ACLU), Civil Rights Legend of New Orleans, The Founders Award by the National Conference for Community and Justice, NOBLE’s – (National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives), “Civil Rights Award” and many, many others, as befits a man of his accomplishments.
Family
Hubbard, a devoted family man, is rightfully proud of the astonishing longevity of his marriage to his late wife Rose and of the daughters his blissful union produced. As he states with a palpable sense of satisfaction, not to mention profound love, “Rose and I were married for 19 years. I wound up with three daughters and adopted the fourth one. We had an understanding that our girls would all finish school. So in those 19 years, we worked our butts off to ensure our daughters could all finish school. Nobody had a student loan. We didn’t ask for any scholarships.”
Evidently an affectionate and doting father, Hubbard is quick to extol his four daughters’ scholastic and professional achievements. “My oldest daughter finished Dillard University. My second daughter finished at Loyola University. And my other two daughters went to Dillard. And God bless me. We never had a student loan. Two of them are here in New Orleans, and one is in Atlanta. And my youngest daughter’s in Houston. My other daughter is a teacher at the Martin Luther King School, and my second daughter is an administrator at a church.”
Hubbard Mansion Bed & Breakfast
Don Hubbard proudly owns the Hubbard Mansion Bed & Breakfast, a home he built on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans as a testament to his love for his wife, Rose. Having never had a landlord, Don cherishes the independence it signifies. This isn’t just a hotel to him; it’s his home, where he warmly welcomes all who stay as guests, offering them a unique blend of Southern charm and modern comfort in a historically rich setting. This grand Greek revival mansion features five exquisitely designed guest rooms, blending the allure of the old South with modern amenities. Here, guests experience exceptional hospitality, making each stay not just a visit but a memorable experience. The mansion is a beacon of Don’s commitment to preserving elegance while providing a luxurious retreat.
Conclusion
Don Hubbard’s life has been extraordinary, marked by passion, principle, and purpose at each turn. Accidentally finding himself at a critical juncture in American history, he became, perhaps unexpectedly, a central figure in the nation’s racial struggles and social changes throughout the 20th century. Hubbard’s keen intelligence and nimble wit embody the qualities that medieval Italian writer Boccaccio famously praised in the Decameron. Despite not having any formal tertiary education, Hubbard possesses an unparalleled understanding of human nature and how humans work, an eye for the main chance and an uncanny ability to make things happen and change the status quo for the better.
Hubbard’s life has been filled with remarkable achievements, marked by selfless and tireless dedication to the liberation and empowerment of his community and his race. His years have been spent not just living but contributing in profound ways to the causes he holds dear. A trail-blazing activist, organiser, leader, liberator and iconoclast to his very fingertips and someone who, despite his advancing years, continues to educate, inspire and affect positive change in whatever milieu or orbit he finds himself, Hubbard more than deserves both his place in the American history books and in New Orleans folklore.
One thing is certain: our world needs more men of the moral fibre and gumption of Hubbard if we are to continue to right societal wrongs and reach the higher physical and emotional plateau of understanding, equality and prosperity.
Don Hubbard, your myriad sacrifices for your noble ideals, indomitable courage, and dogged resilience in pursuit of racial and social equality have improved our lives. The people of Louisiana, the people of this nation and the readers of Kreol Magazine sincerely thank you and humbly salute you.
